"Depending on your view, Keith Jarrett’s status is either problematic or exalted. Is he a pianist whose gifts are compromised by grandiose flights of whimsy or, as a critic put it, one who ‘uniquely connects to a type of universal/musical consciousness’? For Jarrett, jazz is not a tradition or a vocabulary, but a spiritual process that involves opening yourself to true creativity; ‘an attempt,’ he said once, ‘over and over again, to reveal the heart of things.’ When I first encountered Keith Jarrett at a Stan Kenton music camp in 1961, he was a bright 16 year-old who could play brilliantly in any style, jazz or classical, not to mention his own. No surprise that he became a star with the Charles Lloyd Quartet, from 1967-70, whose flower-power ethos suited him perfectly. Subsequently, he led his own groups, but it was with his solo concerts from 1972 that he reached cult celebrity. Jarrett’s free-form improvisations would start with no prior theme or direction and cover all manner of idioms, from gospel vamps to Romantic rhapsodies, propelled for up to an hour by an intense lyricism. Just as intense was his manner – flailing, moaning and gasping. The heady atmosphere came through on record: his 1975 Köln Concert sold over a million. Solo improvisation continued to be central to Jarrett’s work. Besides piano, he’s recorded on clavichord, pipe organ and soprano sax, plus – on the home-made multi-tracked project Spirits – ethnic flutes and percussion."