New release: Not extinguishing peaks։ Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Paul Motian – The old country – 2024: Videos, Photos

“That evening it was hot and humid – it was a rainy fall night in the Pocono mountains. The room was full of people and outside a whole crowd had gathered and listened to the mosquito nets. ” – Keith Jarrett

“The music produced that evening at the Deer Head Inn occupies a special place in the vast reflection undertaken by Keith Jarrett around the repertoire of the standards-this spontaneous session captured on the keeper this month of September 1992 proving to be the only opportunity Throughout their career where Paul Motian and Gary Peacock found themselves playing together alongside the pianist.

Paul, of course, had been part of Keith’s famous “American Quartet” with Charlie Haden and Dewey Redman, and Gary, at the time of this recording, was in the company of Jack Dejohnette on drums, this fabulous group led by Jarrett that we used to call the “trio standards”.

If Gary and Paul found themselves that evening for the only time in their lives to accompany Jarrett in trio, they could nevertheless take advantage of a real musical complicity nourished together in the early 1960s with Paul Bley but also separately in Collaboration trainers with Bill Evans. The music of Deer Head Inn, recorded live in front of a restricted but attentive audience, allows us to hear these extraordinary musicians magnify the melodic purity of the songs and standards that Keith offers them, while influencing the music of their own personalities. Countless musicians have played these tunes but never like that. We published a first selection of pieces recorded that evening at the Deer Head Inn in 1994, thirty years ago, but recently plunging into these bands with Keith, we thought of each other that it would be good to share more.

Keith Jarrett’s recordings at Deer Head Inn occupy a special place among those that the pianist has devoted to trio exploration of the repertoire of great American songs and jazz standards. In this sense, The Old Country appears to be a document of decisive historical importance, for multiple reasons.

Located in the Delaware Water Gap region in Pennsylvania, Deer Head Inn has been offering live music without discontinuing since 1950, which has made him one of the oldest Jazz clubs in the United States still in activity. It was here that in 1961, Jarrett, then aged 16, gave his first concert in trio as a leader. When the owners Bob and Fay Lehr retired, leaving the reins of the establishment to their daughter Dona and their son -in -law Christopher Solliday, Jarrett proposed to return to give an exceptional concert there, in order to honor in his own way the continuous commitment of the club to jazz.

This is how on September 16, 1992, Jarrett, accompanied by Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, found himself playing in front of a packed room. There had been no advertisement to promote the event, but the news had been propagated by word of mouth. The Deer Head is an intimate place and the newspaper Allentown Morning Call later reported that, “out of the 130 people present in the club, 30 had to stand. Outside the porch were agglutinated more than fifty other people. ”

This concert organized in a hurry has the distinction of being the only time in their careers where Jarrett, Peacock and Motian had the opportunity to find themselves playing together in trio. Peacock, at that time, was part with Jack Dejohnette of the famous trio standards led by the pianist. Motian, for his part, had been the drummer of the ‘American quartet’ by Jarrett (see the 2 ECM the Survivors Suite and Eyes of the Heart albums), but had not played with Keith since the group’s dissolution. “Not only had I had not played a piano at the Deer Head for 30 years, but I had not played with Paul Motian for 16 years. This concert was both reunion and Jam Session, “said Jarrett in the Att The Deer Head Inn pocket notes, the first disc, published in 1994, offering a selection of extracts from this performance.

The project was also an opportunity to resuscitate old friendships. The recording was indeed initiated by Bill Goodwin, who held the drums on the album Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett (Atlantic) in 1970, before joining the Phil Woods Quartet, group which for years illuminated the evenings of the Deer Head. Goodwin proposed this recording to Keith as a kind of intimate document to put away in his personal archives but listening to the concert Jarrett acknowledged that he “deserved to be published … I think we can hear in these bands what c ‘is truly that jazz. ”

When At The Deer Head Inn was released in 1994, the press was unanimous to rent its quality. “Music has the momentum and the uninhibited lyricism of the best works by Keith Jarrett,” wrote Stereophile’s critic, while Gramophone spoke of “bewitching” play and that Los Angeles Times greeted “a collection of moments of grace ”.

Thirty years later, the time had come to revisit this equipment. Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher have selected eight new themes totally unpublished to compose the repertoire of The Old Country, the second volume of this legendary concert at the Deer Head.

The Deer Head Inn is a Locanda hotel located on the borders of the Delaware Water Gap National Park, in the State of Pennsylvania. The suggestive views offered by Montagne Pocono and the nearby Delaware lake offer an ideal setting for a stay in contact with nature and for those who intend to venture on the paths of the Appalachi chain. Ten rooms and a menu full of inviting local dishes and a wide choice of drinks.

If you start thinking of having the wrong site and finding yourself on TripAdvisor, don’t worry. The restaurant, built in the mid -1980s of the twentieth century, has become famous, since 1950, for his reputation of Venue dedicated to jazz, with a resident pianist, John Coates JS, and frequent concerts of illustrious guests invited to play in the Amana location. The list is very long, it starts from Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, and through Stan Getz, Phil Woods, Dave Leibman comes to the protagonists of current jazz such as Pat Metheny, Fred Hersch and Bill Charlap. Several concerts that later became more or less famous discs were also recorded at the Deer Head.

One who returns to the first category was recorded in 1992 by the trio of Keith Jarrett with Gary Peacock to the double bass and Paul Motian on drums, and was published by ECM two years later with the self -explosive title “At the deer Head Inn”. The main curiosity aroused by that recording was the return to the formation of Paul Motian, a member, with Charlie Haden and Dawey Redman, of the American quartet of Jarrett until 1977, on the stool normally occupied in that period by Jack de Johnette, who formed with Jarret And Peacock the very celebrated group commonly defined Trio Standards. For Jarrett, the concert at the Deer Head was an opportunity to return to a remote past, when sixteen years old often performed in that place playing first the battery and then the piano, already manifesting the qualities that would have been launched in the nuce In the career that we all know, propitiated by the need to help a fundraising that supported the expenses necessary for the management of the hotel.

At the end of the long preamble we can say that, finally, the entire evening is available for listening to everyone thanks to the recent publication of the ECM cd “The Old Country” which completes the seven tracks published in 1992 with eight more presented here for the first time.

The possibility of listening to the entire performance projects the 1992 album in a new light, generally considered a minor episode of Jarrett’s discography. In a relaxed climate and in front of a family audience with the story of the pianist and well willing to enthusiastically underline the performance, I resume life, that evening of September 16, 1992 in the concert room of the Deer Head Inn, in a particularly successful guise, the Magic formula that crosses the history of US jazz over the decades: take some evergreens from the national songbook and transform them into vehicles for an impromptu creative exchange. A practice conducted at the highest levels of refined expressiveness by Bill Evans that Jarrett, at that time, had totally married, consecrating his main collective expressive channel to that repertoire. The show enhances the exploratory skills of the trio, with Jarret who often underlines his milling on the floor with the well -known vowels, Peacock rhythmic pivot and together refined soloist, and the ethereal Drumming of Motian that gives further lightness to the whole.

As in the first part of the concert, which boasted Davis’s “Solar” and Jaki Byard’s “Chandra”, the compositions of jazz authors are two: the title track of Nat Adderley, a melody of those heard a thousand times that provides the pretext for one Extended improvisation in falling in which blues splinters echo, and a “Straight, no chaser” by Monk who liquidates the theme to become a forge of groove fueled by the continuous inventions of the leader. Monk’s song follows a version of “The Falls in Love Too Easily” faced with the solemnity and modesty of a “silence” by Charlie Haden, a long introduction of the piano only before the theme proposed by centerating the sequences of notes in a inspection Lyric that also involves an ecstatic only of Peacock. If it makes sense to draw up a ranking of the most beautiful versions, I would feel like nominating this for the podium.

The ladder also includes an relaxed version of “Someday My Prince Will as”, a “Golden Earrings” conducted by Peacock’s solid walking and with the essential Breaks of Motian, the cole porter of “All of You”, introduced by the abstract colors of the Piano, and closes in the twilight tone of the “How Long Has This Been Going ‘On” by George Gerswhin. But the words begin to be scarce to describe a record that is a pure act of love for music and it is no coincidence that it starts from the programmatic “Everything I Love” to offer listeners, even to those who over thirty years later virtually present the show of the Deer Head Inn, an invitation to share the feeling of musicians.