Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett (1945- ), American jazz and classical pianist, and composer. Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on May 8, 1945, to Scottish-Irish and Hungarian parents, Jarrett was a child prodigy on the piano. He toured with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians at the age of 16, before studying at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. He turned down a scholarship to study under Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and went instead to New York where he played with drummer Art Blakey, multi-instrumentalist Roland Rahsaan Kirk, and the saxophonist Charles Lloyd in the 1960s.

After a short stint with one of the ground-breaking fusion bands of Miles Davis in the early 1970s, Jarrett formed his own group (the American Quartet), recording several albums including The Survivor's Suite (1976). He also recorded Belonging (1974) and other albums with the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek. In 1983 he recorded the jazz standards album Standards, Volume 1 with drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Gary Peacock; this line-up later became known as the Standards Trio, and continued to record and perform into the 21st century. In the 1990s he took an enforced break from performing, owing to illness, but began to play again in 1998. Subsequent albums included The Melody at Night, With You (1999), Whisper it Not (2000), with the Standards Trio, and Radiance (2005).

Jarrett also developed a reputation in the 1970s as a renowned classical performer on both piano and harpsichord, and made a number of acclaimed recordings (such as the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1989 and the 24 Preludes and Fugues by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1993). He also composed pieces for a range of non-jazz ensembles, including In the Light (1973; with a string quartet and brass quintet), The Celestial Hawk (1980; with a symphony orchestra), Spirits (1986; on a range of non-Western instruments), and Bridge of Light (1993; comprising three pieces for soloist and orchestra and one for violin and piano).

Through his many collaborations and acclaimed solo piano improvisations (such as The Köln Concert of 1975 which sold more than a million copies), Jarrett introduced tonal and structural ideas to jazz from disparate sources that included classical, rock, country, and world music.