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Keith Jarrett: Facing You

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: ECM Records
Released: 1972
Time:
 47:37
Category: Jazz
Producer(s): Manfred Eicher
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.keithjarrett.org
Appears with: Jan Garbarek, Jack DeJohnette
Purchase date: 2015
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] In Front (K.Jarrett) - 10:09
[2] Ritooria (K.Jarrett) - 5:57
[3] Lalene (K.Jarrett) - 8:39
[4] My Lady, My Child (K.Jarrett) - 7:24
[5] Landscape for Future Earth (K.Jarrett) - 3:36
[6] Starbright (K.Jarrett) - 5:07
[7] Vapallia (K.Jarrett) - 3:57
[8] Semblence (K.Jarrett) - 3:02

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Keith Jarrett - Piano

Manfred Eicher - Producer
Jan Erik Kongshaug - Engineer
Danny Michael - Photography
Barbara Wojirsch - Layout Design

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1972 LP ECM Records ECM-1017

Recorded November 1971 at the Arne Bendiksen Studio, Oslo.



Keith Jarrett will always be something of an enigma to me. Not because he is more than human, but because he plays with an honesty that is practically unfathomable. His melodies have a way of spiraling in on themselves and the effect is intoxicating.

This seminal album (his first for ECM) arguably finds Jarrett at his most focused and at his most transparent. Every note seems perfectly placed. His intuition is on fire here and we are only too happy to be engulfed along the way. “In Front” establishes a flavorful and scintillating mood from the get go before taking things down a notch with a requisite set of ballads. Of these, “My Lady, My Child” is achingly beautiful and gets only more so as it unspools. “Starbright” lifts the spirits with a shade of whimsy and gushes with the natural force of a breached dam, with “Vapallia” comprising its final trickles. Last but not least is “Semblence,” which rolls and bounces with the sheer exuberance Jarrett is known for.

What can one say about Jarrett’s performance style? Words like “fluid” and “unbridled” don’t even begin to capture it. His fingers seem to have minds of their own, anticipating each and every note before the next key is struck. Jarrett transcends the rubric of improvisation into something else entirely: improvisition. By this, I mean that his ability to call upon the music to speak is so compositionally disguised that it can only occur when one surrenders oneself to the freedom of the empty score. This produces not objective music, but rather the utmost subjective experience one can have with an instrument.

While Jarrett has been given all the credit for instituting the solo piano as a viable instrument beyond the confines of classical music, let us not forget his wonderful predecessors on ECM (and whose work I have previously reviewed on this blog). This disc is, I daresay, downright groovy. A real discovery to be treasured. Just listening to it makes me want to contort my face and screech along as if I were the one at the keys.

Essential.

ECM Records



Keith Jarrett's first album of piano solos and, to many listeners, his best.

New York Times



Keith Jarrett's first solo acoustic piano recording remains one of his best. At this point in late 1971, Jarrett had just started improvising completely freely. That does not mean that his solos were necessarily atonal but simply that they were not planned in any way in advance. The music on these eight improvisations are often quite melodic, very rhythmic and bluesy. This set makes for a perfect introduction to Jarrett's many solo piano recordings.

Scott Yanow (allmusic.com)



Facing You is one of the most important recordings in contemporary jazz for several reasons, aside from being beautifully conceived and executed by pianist Keith Jarrett. It is a hallmark recording of solo piano in any discipline, a signature piece in the early ECM label discography, a distinct departure from mainstream jazz, a breakthrough for Jarrett, and a studio prelude for his most famous solo project to follow, The Köln Concert. Often meditative, richly melodic, inventive, and introspective beyond compare, Jarrett expresses his soul in tailored tones that set standards for not only this kind of jazz, but music that would serve him and his fans in good stead onward. In this program of all originals, which sound spontaneously improvised with certain pretexts and motifs as springboards, the rhapsodic "Ritooria," 4/4 love/spirit song "Lalene," and song for family and life "My Lady; My Child" firmly establish Jarrett's heartfelt and thoughtful approach. "Vapallia" cements the thematic, seemingly effortless, lighter -- but never tame -- aesthetic. "Starbright" is an easy-paced two-step tune signifying fully Jarrett's personalized stance. Straddling a more jagged, angular, and free edge, the pianist evokes the influence of Paul Bley during "Semblence" (sic). But it is the opening selection, an extended ten-minute opus titled "In Front," that truly showcases Jarrett at his playful best -- a timeless, modal, direct, and bright delight. A remarkable effort that reveals more and more with each listen, this recording has stood the test of time, and is unquestionably a Top Three recording in Keith Jarrett's long and storied career.

Michael G. Nastos - All Music Guide



I’ve got to admit, I’m not really a huge Keith Jarrett fan. His famous concerts tend to be long on piano noodling and high-pitched, irritating vocalizations for my taste. However, Facing You (on the ECM label) just might be the greatest single solo piano release in jazz history. That’s a pretty strong claim, eh?

Well, after you hear Jarrett’s staggeringly fluid and inventive improvising throughout the gorgeous songs on this record, with nary a spastic yelp, then tell me that I’m exaggerating.

Facing You opens with the ten minute plus Out Front, an upbeat, gospel tinged tour de force which is actually somewhat unrepresentative of the album. Most of the tunes that follow, like Ritooria, are much more melancholy in tone, with an occasional sprightly tune like Starbright or Semblance to break things up.

At this point in Jarrett’s career, he was moving in the direction of completely improvised music, but the songs on Facing You have strong compositional underpinnings, which Jarrett uses as starting points for improvisation, rather than abandoning preplanned harmonies and melodies completely. Facing You benefits hugely from this underlying structure — there is almost zero flab or dissipation of energy on Facing You, making it probably the most fully realized recording of Jarrett’s career.

Every song on Facing You is full to bursting with ideas, making it almost seem as though the songs are through-composed. This is all the more startling when you consider how little the blues, one of the pillars of jazz, figures into Jarrett’s harmonic language. It seems like his ideas come more from European, classical or folk sources, which helps to explain how Jarrett ended up forming a European quartet later in his career, as well as developing a second career as a classical pianist.

But perhaps the most startling thing about Facing You is how lucid it is. If you listen to the release immediately before it, Expectations, or the one immediately after, Ruta and Daitya, you can scarcely believe they are all products of the same creative imagination. Every tune on Facing You is like a diamond, all of the concepts compressed and refined into a glittering jewel. The releases preceding and following Facing You are more like coal, the raw ingredients of a diamond. As enjoyable as they are, Expectations and Ruta and Daitya are more exploratory in nature, with Jarrett seemingly figuring out what he wants to say as he’s saying it, or sometimes vamping until he figures out what he wants to say. Whereas, on Facing You, it’s as though he’s dictating the songs of angels.

If you check out the samples on Amazon, you will get a pretty good indication of what Facing You is like. If you like what you hear, by all means pick it up! You won’t regret it.

For more indulgence-free Keith Jarrett, check out Death and the Flower, Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett, and Airto’s Free(Keith Jarrett plays electric piano on one or two cuts).

Jazzbo Notes Essential Recording
 

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