The New York Times: Premium Archive

The New York Times: Premium ArchiveJune 24, 2005
JAZZ FESTIVAL REVIEW; Elegant Pianism, Poised and Mostly Quiet
By JON PARELES

The last thing Keith Jarrett wants to be known as is a showman. When he led his trio on Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, he spoke a few times to the JVC festival audience -- complaining about reviews and photographers -- but at the piano, he sought ecstatic communion with the music.

Like someone possessed by inspiration, he moaned along with sustained notes. He wiggled keys with his finger as if he could get vibrato from a keyboard; he half-stood, or sank nearly to his knees, or stared unseeing at the audience. When one tune hinted at bossa nova, he swayed his hips. Yet what came out of the piano was unshakably poised and precise, and mostly quiet.

Mr. Jarrett was leading what has come to be called his standards trio, inaugurated in 1983, with Gary Peacock on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. The trio doesn't have to worry about new material, since it can draw on a wealth of ballads and jazz tunes, familiar and obscure; Wednesday's set included ''Tennessee Waltz,'' Bud Powell's ''Budo'' and ''When I Fall in Love.'' Nor does it fuss about form -- the basic theme-solos-theme, with or without some piano-drums trades, served most songs. This trio finds ample room for exploration within.

It was a night of elegant pianism. Stating ballads, Mr. Jarrett made melodies sing with hushed purity over chords so transparent that even a slight change in voicing became an event, following through with improvisations that evolved from long, even runs to quick trickles of sprint and pause. Up-tempo tunes were so light-fingered that complexities sounded casual.

He has the right collaborators. Mr. Peacock's walking bass lines landed unassertively in all the right places, and his solos modestly crooned pizzicato melodies as Mr. Jarrett hung chords above them like Japanese lanterns. Meanwhile, Mr. DeJohnette worked the threshold of sound and silence with discreet brilliance, constantly varying his delicate accents. In ''Somewhere,'' as Mr. Jarrett lingered over the melody, Mr. DeJohnette visited one cymbal at a time to offer a lexicon of rustles, hisses and pings.

The group made two departures from theme-solos-theme, and both were rewarding. Mr. Jarrett started ''On Green Dolphin Street'' with the kind of ostinato he often uses in solo concerts. (He returns to Carnegie Hall on Sept. 26 to perform solo.) He turned one chord into a dancing array of notes, with a melody peeking out of the counterpoint, as Mr. Peacock and Mr. DeJohnette tipped the beat toward the Caribbean. And a brisk version of Thelonious Monk's ''Straight, No Chaser'' opened up to free improvisation: first with Mr. Jarrett's right hand tracing far-flung harmonies, then with a congenial three-way interchange.

Mr. Jarrett's stage antics might look and sound like distractions from such knowing musicianship. The paradox is that they don't. They portray all the effort that isn't heard in the notes, so music that might be heard as expertly pretty, or even dismissed as background music, isn't taken for granted. Mr. Jarrett's adoring audiences listen for the subtleties, pointed there by the spectacle. That's showmanship.