A new book in French about Keith Jarrett’s 1976 Japanese tour, Keith Jarrett, Japon 1976 – L’Ours du soleil (Keith Jarrett, Japan 1976 – The Sun Bear), was published on October 8, 2026 by Arléa. Written by Philippe Séclier, a French photographer and journalist who has already published several books about Pasolini, Sergio Larrain, Marc Riboud, and Tadao Ando, it is a 160-page paperback.

Fifty years after the tour that produced the Sun Bear Concerts, Séclier travelled across Japan looking for the concert halls (some of them gone, others transformed), jazz kissa, collectors, record shop owners, and sound engineers connected to those eight solo concerts given in thirteen days in November 1976. As the publisher writes:

En 1976, Keith Jarrett est au Japon pour une tournée exceptionnelle : huit récitals solo, donnés en treize jours. Cinq d’entre eux formeront les Sun Bear Concerts, dix vinyles publiés par ECM. Six heures et demie, et plus encore, d’improvisation. En enquêtant sur cette étonnante aventure de Keith Jarrett, Philippe Séclier interroge les témoins, les lieux et les traces. Son livre, récit d’un voyage et d’une fascination, approche le mystère d’une musique née un soir pour n’être plus rejouée.

The book opens with a short autobiographical text by Keith Jarrett himself, previously unpublished in French, which originally appeared in Japanese in the program of his April 1981 solo tour of Japan. It can be read in the excerpt published by ActuaLitté, which also reviewed the book.

Thanks to Nabe for the link.

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A new book in Korean about Keith Jarrett, 키스 자렛: 즉흥의 상태 (Keith Jarrett: In a State of Improvisation), was published on October 25, 2025 by Time of Flow. Written by Kijun Lee, a New York-based pianist, journalist, and producer who has been researching Keith Jarrett for more than thirty years, it is a 376-page hardcover in a slipcase, with a foreword by Lewis Porter and about fifty previously unpublished photographs by Roberto Masotti.

The book is based on interviews with people close to Keith Jarrett who had rarely been heard from before, such as Christopher Solliday (who studied with the same piano teacher and later owned the Deer Head Inn), Eugene P. Schantzenbach (a high school classmate), Ray Santisi (his teacher at Berklee), and Stephen Cloud (his former manager), as well as John Coates Jr., Bill Goodwin, Ron McClure, Bob Moses, Richie Beirach, Timothy Hill, and Ethan Iverson. As Lewis Porter writes in his foreword:

In addition, Kijun has collected a wide range of relevant quotes from previously published interviews with Jarrett and others. He arranges these materials with care and originality, presenting readers with new connections and perspectives. The result is an example of what a jazz book can be: well-researched yet deeply personal, archival yet immediate.

An English edition is in preparation.

Thanks to Kijun for letting me know.

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