Comment by yesenadam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yesenadam | Hacker News Reader

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Jazz pianist here. Among the greatest jazz pianist albums:

Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage, Empyrean Isles, Herbie Hancock Trio (1981)

McCoy Tyner - Supertrios, The Real McCoy

Keith Jarrett - Facing You, Survivors Suite, Fort Yawuh, Expectations

A lot of my favourite piano/keyboard playing is on Miles Davis albums:

Red Garland on Steamin'. Relaxin', Workin', Cookin', Round About Midnight, Milestones

Herbie Hancock on Four & More, My Funny Valentine

Keith Jarrett on Live-Evil

Not to mention all the other amazing musicians on those! Among my musician friends, Miles' band with Wayne Shorter, Herbie, Ron Carter and Tony Williams (1963-68) is considered unrivalled in jazz. All Miles' records with Gil Evans' orchestra are superlative also.

P.S. There's also the strange and not-very-important question of labels – I don't think Facing You (or The Köln Concert) or Live-Evil are jazz, or anywhere near it. They are played mostly by jazz musicians, I guess. Who cares, they're good music.

Bill Evans and Hiromi are, for me, in the top 3 with Chick. Hiromi is a monster of technique whereas Bill is a pioneer of the Chopin Debussy style, when most jazz pianists then didn't have roots in the classical world.

Was going to post the same. I can't go a week without listening to Bill, Chick or Hiromi at some point. There is a YouTube video of dualing pianos with Chick and Hiromi, it's one of my most watched. They are both just out of this world.

I'm not one of your friends, and I'm hardly a musician, but I agree that Miles' second quintet is indeed unrivaled in jazz. All of the music they made is sublime, but my favorites are the albums Filles de Kilimanjaro, Sorcerer, Water Babies, Nefertiti, and of course In A Silent Way (featuring late great Chick Corea).

Not sure why "of course" In a Silent Way - that's with a very different, much larger group. p.s. my favourite is Live at the Plugged Nickel.

I'm curious, if The Köln Concert is not jazz then what is it? I'm not a fan of discussing labels and semantics endlessly but I'm interested where would you place it, as I have a very hard time imagining it under any other major genre.

Well, I don't hear anything jazzy about it. I guess it's (piano) improvisation. Or "Keith Jarrett music".. a mix of classical/gospely/bluesy/folky etc influences. Don't know. If someone wanted to hear jazz, I wouldn't play them that. I think if Keith wasn't a jazz musician, noone would think of calling it jazz.

I heard a couple of times about 15 years ago a classical guitarist playing a transcription of the Memories of Tomorrow encore (the last track of Köln Concert) on the Australian classical-music-only radio station ABC Classic FM. They'd never play the original – that would be "jazz", I guess, and inappropriate. But a classical guitarist playing the same notes – classical.

Interesting view, thanks for sharing it. You are likely more qualified to categorize music as you have proper musical training. To me, the fact, that the concert is entirely improvised already places a foot on the jazz camp, considering it's an important characteristic of the genre that is not strongly shared by other genres.

The second argument can be tricky though, if I played you Technical Death Metal in the piano you may think it's classical music too [0]. There is something more to being a genre than the notes that are played, I think...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W05qbb0NeYk

I'm not trained in categorization though, and don't often think about it! The subject reminds me of bins in records stores, and maybe that's all it comes down to. "Hmm which of these large bins does Köln Concert best fit into". Reminiscent of finding pi to 1 decimal place, not very useful. And Keith's solo improvisations seem particularly unique.

Köln Concert does seem a very different kind of thing to Facing You though, although the latter is mostly totally improvised also, I believe. I guess due to F You's much shorter tune lengths and absence of extended improvisations over 1 or 2 chords etc. Facing You will play for 10 seconds with what Köln spends 5 minutes with..

> it's an important characteristic of the genre is not strongly shared by other genres.

What is not strongly shared, improvisation, or being entirely improvised?[0]

I also listen to a lot of North Indian classical..which seems about the same percentage entirely improvised as the Köln Concert.

I'm no an expert, but I don't think totally improvised western music is at all common outside "free jazz". i.e. it usually sounds like atonal noise, not pleasingly harmonious. That is very difficult. Classical musicians used to do it, until the 19th C, apparently, but gave up.

> There is something more to being a genre than the notes that are played

Absolutely, I've made this point many times myself, and it's something that was driven home to me when I started writing music with computers. Use jazz instrumentation and the music sounds like jazz. Rock instrumentation and it sounds like rock. Orchestra and it sounds like classical etc.

[0] Just to be clear, the last track isn't "entirely improvised", it's an improvisation over the Jarrett tune Memories of Tomorrow, which he'd been playing since at least 1966. And

> Subtle laughter may be heard from the audience at the very beginning of "Part I", in response to Jarrett's quoting of the melody of the signal bell which announces the beginning of an opera or concert to patrons at the Köln Opera House, the notes of which are G D C G A.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_K%C3%B6ln_Concert

I just learned that the Freiburg and Paris 1975 solo concerts, recorded days before and after Köln, respectively, feature pre-composed melodies a lot more. I wonder if that was because Köln was recorded by ECM? (Part II of Freiburg is a 30 minute expanded version of a melody from Survivors Suite, in Paris Part II starts with In Your Quiet Place and then keeps returning to the same Survivors Suite melody.)

Both available here: http://tela.sugarmegs.org/

There is some backstory regarding the piano that Jarrett was given for the Köln Concert being broken [0]. That may have forced him to improvise a lot more as whatever pre-composed melodies he could use as a crutch may have not been workable with the piano he had.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_K%C3%B6ln_Concert

> That may have forced him to improvise a lot more as whatever pre-composed melodies he could use as a crutch may have not been workable with the piano he had.

Hmm I doubt it. I'd expect that to exert force more in the other direction. Anyway, it's all speculation. There is a book called Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert which seems well-written.

p.s. I just keep mentioning Facing You because I think it's his best record! I've talked to quite a few musicians who feel the same.

Thank you, good excuse to give it a new listen today. I have a soft spot for "The Survivor's Suite", I think is his album I return the most often to.

Thanks for the explanation, it seems you have a more nuanced view due to having a broader exposure and understanding of music and musical theory so I appreciate your viewpoints.

I'd call The Köln Concert "protracted edging".

Have some respect. For HN, if not for Keith. Thanks.

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