“The album Belonging ranks with the greatest quartet recordings in jazz,” wrote Keith Jarett biographer Ian Carr, “because everything about it is superlative: the compositions, the free-flowing interplay, the level of inspiration and the brilliantly focused improvising of all four musicians.” Produced by Manfred Eicher in Oslo in April 1974, the record exudes the freshness of spontaneity. “It was the fastest album I’ve ever done,” Jan Garbarek would later say, referencing Keith Jarrett’s emphasis on first takes in the studio to capture, above all, the spirit of the pieces. The music of Belonging – three beautiful, yearning ballads (“Blossom”, “Belonging”, “Solstice”) and three rip-roaringly propulsive tunes (“Spiral Dance”, “Long As You Know You’re Living Yours”, “The Windup”) – was written to highlight the specific strengths of this team of players. Its positive energy and sense of buoyancy are evocatively conveyed by the bright sky cover image of Tadayuki Naito.
Belonging
Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson, Jon Christensen
- 1Spiral Dance
04:08 - 2Blossom
12:18 - 3'Long As You Know You're Living Yours
06:11 - 4Belonging
02:12 - 5The Windup
08:26 - 6Solstice
13:15
Beautiful! Keith Jarrett continues to dumbfound in his capacity as the most versatile jazz musician alive, (…) with this collection of eight warm jazz compositions, reaffirming his roots in the old tradition. The Scandinavian musicians remain remarkably sensitive to his every nuance, sounding in fact as though the quartet has been together for a decade rather than a matter of days. Throughout ehre´s repeated evidence of real group understanding. As ever, with Jarrett and Garbarek both, lyricism is uppermost at all times, as they take „control“ to new highs with Danielsson and Christensen in support. (…) And so the quartet progresses tot he play out groove, building, retreating, developing some ideas, implying others, and all the time playing with one mind. Could you reasonably ask for more than that?
Steve Lake, Melody Maker
The album as a whole is a faultless vindication of Jarrett´s reputation for producing complex and subtle but wholly accessible music, delightful to jazz specialists and casual listeners alike. The quintessential European-quartet Jarrett recording, it not only gave ist name to this particular band but set new standards for quartet jazz. Simply indispensable.
CP, The Gramophone Jazz CD Guide
“The album Belonging ranks with the greatest quartet recordings in jazz,” wrote Keith Jarett biographer Ian Carr, “because everything about it is superlative: the compositions, the free-flowing interplay, the level of inspiration and the brilliantly focused improvising of all four musicians.” Produced by Manfred Eicher in Oslo in April 1974, Belonging exudes the freshness of spontaneity. “It was the fastest album I’ve ever done,” Jan Garbarek would later say, referencing Keith Jarrett’s emphasis on first takes in the studio to capture, above all, the spirit of the pieces. For listeners at the time, one of Belonging’s marvels was the way in which Keith had created a group identity for this “European Quartet”, shaping a musical language quite distinct from the turbulent, eruptive character of his “American Quartet” (with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian). In fact, Jarrett and Jan Garbarek had admired each other’s playing since the late 1960s, crossing paths when Keith was with Charles Lloyd’s group and Jan with George Russell’s. In the winter of ’73, Garbarek travelled to the US to study the new music that Jarrett had written to feature him – both the small group pieces of Belonging and the orchestral soundscapes of the soon-to-realized Luminessence. Keith was also well aware of the potential of bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen, the driving forces of the contemporaneous Jan Garbarek-Bobo Stenson Quartet, whose Witchi-Tai-To album had been recorded five months before Belonging.
The music of Belonging, then – three beautiful, yearning ballads (“Blossom”, “Belonging”, “Solstice”) and three rip-roaringly propulsive tunes (“Spiral Dance”, “Long As You Know You’re Living Yours”, “The Windup”) - was written to highlight the specific strengths of this team of players. Its positive energy and sense of buoyancy are evocatively conveyed by the bright sky cover image of Tadayuki Naito.
In his book on Jarrett, Wolfgang Sandner writes, “The album is a rare masterpiece and a wonder of intuitive understanding between the participants. The record is without parallel in terms of clarity and balance, the natural musicianship of the four players (revealing no trace of egoistic virtuosity), self-assuredness and awareness in communication, and artistic discretion in responding to the ideas of the fellow players. (…) The music reaches perfection in form and is flawless in execution.”
Building upon Belonging’s creative blueprint, further music would follow from the quartet – one more studio album, My Song, and three concert recordings: Nude Ants, Personal Mountains, and Sleeper. Sandner: “Listening to these albums, we can easily understand why this music has made such an impact on musicians up to this day, and why the quartet is considered to be one of the greatest in modern jazz.”
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