The Celestial Hawk by Keith Jarrett
The Celestial Hawk is an album of contemporary classical music written by Keith Jarrett and performed by Jarrett with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Keene. It was recorded in March 1980 and released by ECM Records in November that same year. The Celestial Hawk came about when, in 1976, Jarrett received a commission from Deutsche Grammophon to compose a piece for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, to be conducted by Seiji Ozawa, and featuring piano, with Jarrett as the soloist. The result was a 200-page 40-minute fully-composed piece with minimal improvisation, completed in 1978. (The title refers to a bird depicted in Tibetan mythology, of which one wing represents compassion and the other represents wisdom.) Unfortunately, the BSO were expecting a jazz-based work, with Jarrett improvising at the piano, and lost interest in the piece. Later, Jarrett recalled: "I had stumbled into what I would call the marketing world of classical music, without realizing it. I'm glad that they never did it. They thought it was going to be a big kick for the orchestra sales and they would have this jazz piece with me as soloist. And then they discovered this isn't jazz at all - it doesn't even swing, and it's different from what we expected, and it won't sell, and so... sorry!... It's pathetic, but it's normal practice." However, Jarrett and Manfred Eicher then decided to record the music for ECM, financing the project themselves. The recording took place at Carnegie Hall with the Syracuse Symphony, conducted by Christopher Keene, on March 22, 1980. Eicher reflected: "I had to work with a team I'd never met before... We did the recording in a few hours, despite the underground trains roaring by all the time - we had to stop and start and stop and start. And the union rate!... it was an incredibly expensive project for ECM, but it worked... The records didn't sell very well... but so what!"
