Keith Jarrett Discography: Introduction

1.1 How it all started

Gordon's first law: if a research isn't worth the pain, why should you do it well?

I have been looking for an updated and reliable catalogue listing all of Jarrett's works for a long while. I came up to find several sources but none of them was so complete as I mean it should be. This is why I put together all the info I had in order to get to an acceptable list.

I started adding one, two or even more albums a day in a unique web page and within a couple of months the job was almost done. Then I sent a copy of it to Lynn D. Newton; he helped me greatly checking the whole document and mostly rewriting it, providing better style, grammar and look.

Since this document was published on the web, many persons wrote to me to point out errors, suggest new listings and, more generally, to give any kind of positive feedback. That's why I think the actual document has reached a high grade of reliability, consistence and completeness. However, please do not consider the discography to be perfect.

see the section Disclaimer

1.2 Availability

I thought about having different formats for the discography and incidentally I came across the Linux Doc standard. It requires writing the source with a simple text editor following a SGML template. So I have written a brief perl script to convert the original HTML source to the standard Linux Doc SGML format. Starting from the SGML source, several other formats can be generated automatically, namely: HTML, PostScript, PDF, ASCII text and some less used standard (such as RTF). Actually I only provide support for HTML, PDF and ASCII text so please don't ask for anything else than these ones. The PDF version looks much like a real book (I mean a printed book, not one of those funny jazz score collections with tons of wrong chord changes, keys and whatever) so I recommend this one if you wish to have a printed copy of this document. The download page for all of these versions is http://mcaserta.com/jarrett.php

1.3 Other resources

The ECM web site is at http://www.ecmrecords.com/

Eric Jarrett (Keith's brother) has started a web site which states itself as being an official resource. The web site has a very active forum where Eric kindly answers any reasonable question about his brother. The address is http://www.keithjarrett.net/

There's a club on Yahoo! about Keith Jarrett with lots of activity. If you're a real Jarrett fan, I'll definitely want to subscribe to this group. The address is http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/keithjarrett

Also have a look at Olivier Bruchez's Jarrett site at http://www.keithjarrett.org

The Keith Jarrett page at the Jazz Web is at http://www.nwu.edu/jazz/artists/jarrett.keith/ There is a link to Lynn D. Newton's Keith Jarrett, a sketch of his life and work. I strongly recommend reading it. Lynn keeps a FAQ as well on his site.

I also recommend reading these books:

"Keith Jarrett, The Man And His Music", by Ian Carr, Grafton Books, London 1991.
"Inner Views. Conversations with Kunihiko Yamashita." Published by Masamichi Asaishi / Rising Inc.

1.4 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank:

Lynn D. Newton for reviewing (well, maybe I'd better say rewriting) the original HTML source and for his many helpful criticisms and suggestions. Lynn, I hope not much of your work has been lost during the transition from HTML to SGML. If so, I apologize.

Nicola Severino for having let me discover Jarrett's work and for being one of the persons I really enjoy playing with.

Hartmut Kuipers, Martin Molenaar, Arvi Nikkarev, Robin Janicki and Thomas E. Smith for their contributions to this work.

Joe Germuska for having hosted the original HTML discography into the Jazz Web at the Northwestern University for a long time.

Linus Torvalds, the Linux community and the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) for having provided me with such a powerful tool and operating system for developing this document, for free.

The "Net", without which this document wouldn't have come to life.

Manfred Eicher for his work.

Keith Jarrett for the wonderful music.

1.5 Copyleft Notice

This notice's aim is to keep the Keith Jarrett Discography (KJD from now on) being freely distributable. Of course I can't claim a copyright over a listing of albums but it is my intention to make this document the most accurate as possible, so this copyright notice basically says you can copy and distribuite the KJD but you are not allowed to modify it unless you contact me for approval. You are warmly encouraged instead to collaborate with me in order to improve this document.

All source code (namely the sgml file used to obtain all versions of the discography and basically all files found in the kjd.tar.gz file) in the KJD is placed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, available from http://www.gnu.org/

You should have found a copy of the GNU GPL within kjd.tar.gz if you downloaded it. You'd probably like to know that such license is often referred to as the copyleft license.

1.6 Disclaimer

I'm writing the following because people often write to me in order to contact Mr. Jarrett. So far I've received requests for bookings and invitations to try Steinway pianos. That's funny but I want to make clear to anyone out there that I have no contact with Mr. Jarrett or his agent (if he has one). I have never met him. In other words, if it isn't clear yet, I have nothing to do with him. The only reasonable way to contact Mr. Jarrett is by way of ECM records. More info about this can be found in Lynn D. Newton's FAQ on his pages.

After all I'm not a collector. I just owe a very few of the items listed here. If you need a person who can give you an opinion about any of Jarrett's works, that person is not me.

I am aware of errors in the original discographies I used to obtain this one. I wish to thank the people who write to me so that many of the errors can get fixed but some of the bugs may still be laying around.

I have often thought about including pictures for covers of the albums listed here but there might be copyright issues I don't want to get involved with. After all, it's not hard to find the covers for most of the albums on the WWW: have a look at the listing on CdNow.com.

Please also keep in mind that this document was written while under a strong Jarrett influence. Today I'm more focusing on the bebop scene and basically all music made in jazz between the early fourties and the end of the sixties. Yes, I always hear Jarrett's records with the spirit of a jazz/classical piano student but I'm more focusing on the roots of jazz now.

1.7 How to contribute

To let this document become the most updated and reliable source about Jarrett's works, please send comments, updates, questions or any kind of positive/negative feedback at kjd@mcaserta.com

1.8 Documentation Conventions

Due to the great productivity of Mister Jarrett I had to split up his discography into decades. I hope this results in best readability and ease of consultation when you are accessing this resource via the world wide web. Please note that the sort order is given by the date of publication of each album, not by the recording date.

Most of the albums are catalogued this way:

Title of the album, (Author)
Year of publication. General notes about the album (Has it been recorded live or in studio? Where exactly? And when?). Album code. Awards this album was given, if any.
Featuring: Player One (instrument played), Player Two (instrument played), ... , Player n (instrument played).
Tracks: Track One, Track Two, ... , Track n.

Some album is not shown this way but it shouldn't be too hard to guess the right format for it.