Invocations / The Moth and the Flame

Invocations/The Moth and the Flame is a 1981 double album of improvised music performed by Keith Jarrett in two different sessions taking place in 1979 and 1980. Each album has a different approach, setting and conception. In Invocations (recorded at Ottobeuren Abbey, a Benedictine abbey in Ottobeuren, then part of West Germany), Jarrett plays soprano saxophone and pipe organ exclusively, while The Moth and the Flame (recorded at Tonstudio Bauer studios in Ludwigsburg, West Germany) is a solo piano suite. This double album was released by ECM Records in May 1981. Invocations was performed on the same organ that Jarrett used for Hymns/Spheres. Regarding the recording date, Jarrett recalled: "Just being in the abbey is quite a frightening experience... Everything I played... was extemporaneous, and the two tracks on which I did a soprano-sax over-dub were like minor miracles. It was about forty degrees in there, and my horn felt like an ice cube."