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Saturday, January 15, 2011

Hidden treasures - Keith Jarrett "Spirits"


Every music collector has dusty, unexplored shelves, seldom listened discs and music...

Being no exception, I recently (re)discovered among the several Keith Jarrett's discs I own, his double record-set "Spirits" on ECM.

Issued in 1986, it's an awesome soliloquy, music he played - more than composed - in perfect solitude, multi-tracking and painstackingly layering it in his New Jersey home-studio... sparingly played piano and a lot of percussions and ethnic flutes, a soprano sax, a (badly played) acoustic-guitar, and multi-tracked drone voices and... melodies to die-for.

Everything he plays, mr. Jarrett, seems to own the key of humankind truest deepness, a memory of long-forgotten tunes, plaintive chanting, epic campfire songs which simply trascend musical labels.

It's not Codona, it's not Tibbetts, yet its Nana Vasconcelos and Egberto Gismonti and Gurdijeff and de Hartmann's eternal music... from first grooves you think: "Hey, where I already listened to this?!?!?!" and "here" is the mistery!

It's naked inner voice(s), a spiritual trip inside a musician soul... a very private affaire given a public appearance and life.

Same happens when you listen to Jo-Ann Kelly's blues... it's - yes, UNFORTUNATELY "was"- a white British singer, yet her voice was so true and black and baaad and sincere you simply enjoy her playing and music... same happens for the Master of Cerebral improvisation, "mr. don't use a flash at my concerts"... his craft, mr. Jarrett's, I mean, is superseding the innegable no-empathic character of the musician.

"Spirits" lives of its own huge beauty... it's something immediately recognizable...

... so, please, DO NOT waste your time reading my bad english elucubrations:-)))... go and find this recording... download it... I simply had to find it on K. Jarrett's bin and possibly never listened to it because... who knows?!?... maybe I wasn't ready.

... BUT I'm "now"- hic et nunc - listening to it, singing-along and loosing - desperately and joyfully - loosing myself into it... and it's not important the disc existed for 25 years, now... (this) music and - I trust - humankind are timeless.

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