Munich 2016

It’s fascinating to hear Keith Jarrett’s 1981 outing in Munich, documented on <i>Concerts (Bregenz, München)</i>, and to compare it with <i>Munich 2016</i>, recorded 35 years later in the same city but in a different hall. Jarrett was in his mid-thirties at the time of that first album; he was 71 on this one. The 2016 recording is warmer and rounder, not as bright, in-your-face and animalistic as 1981, but we hear an accumulated musical wisdom, and still the sense of risk that permeates all of Jarrett’s improvised solo piano epics. Unusually for a Jarrett recording, almost all audience applause has been edited out, but we can still hear the expectation and appreciation in the room as he moves from one episode to the next, summoning all the technical strength and rootsy lyricism for which he’s famous.