On ‘Inside Out’, the "Standards Trio" throws away the tunes and embarks on daring improvisations in a performance from the Royal Festival Hall, London. Keith Jarrett: "Those of us who experimented a lot with so-called ‘free’ playing in the 60s have years of experience to bring to it again". "Inside Out" is a timely reminder that jazz is also about taking risks.
Inside Out
Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette
- 1From The Body
22:41 - 2Inside Out
20:13 - 3341 Free Fade
18:43 - 4Riot
06:10 - 5When I Fall In Love
06:45
After 18 years together and 13 recordings, several of them multiple-disc sets, it might seem difficult to pinpoint a career highlight, but for Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio, this could be it. Recorded at London's Royal Festival Hall over two nights in July 2000, Inside Out captures the trio departing from ist regular format to improvise freely without the framework of the American popular songbook or bop standards for all but seven minutes. The result is spell-inducing, covering the gamut from the minimalist elegance of "When I Fall In Love" to the blazing clatter of "Riot". ... If last year's bop-drenched live set Whisper Not signaled that Jarrett was back at full torce, Inside Out gives notice that the band has stepped it up another notch. At this point in its existence, the name the Standards Trio has ceased to signify the band's repertoire: rather, it stands for the level they set for other improvisers.
James Hale, Down Beat
On 26 and 28 July 2000 Keith Jarrett gave concerts with his trio at London's Royal Festival Hall to capacity audiences. Although a few standard songs were performed, most of the performances were freely improvised, with no pre-discussion or set structure. The three men had been active in the free jazz era of the Sixties and, after years of playing together, their rapport is magical. ... A very wide range of music and emotion is covered in these performances, which often swing and rock ecstatically. Any member of the trio can initiate a new direction. In the first section there's an eloquent and witty bass solo and when Jarrett and DeJohnette join in, Peacock plays a high urgent bass figure which they pick up on and the whole performance sparkles. Other high spots are the slow, marvellous, hymnic gospel performance in the second section; the brilliant virtuosity in the bravura third section; and, in the short last section, "Riot", the extraordinary rhythmic violence and dissonance of Jarrett's piano-playing, which is exceptionally original and exciting.
Ian Carr, BBC Magazine Music (Pick of the month)
From start to finish, the trio create a kind of creative forcefield that crackles with spontaneous energy at every juncture. As Jarrett points out in his incisive, provocative sleevenotes "jazz is all about what you can bring to the material." Well, he's been bold enough to dispense with the material altogether and let the complicity of his accompanists as well as his own imagination serve as signposts to exciting places. So we're dealing with a freeform sweat session - the one that "Wynton Marsalis and Ken Burns don't understand" - where the players push and pull each other at will, letting melodic fragments bubble up then cool down, not quite going into "songs" but drawing heavily on the communicative power of the blues. ... This is a record that will completely floor you.
Kevin Le Gendre, Echoes
Inside Out is a small miracle in today's jazzland where market "wisdom" too often trumps creative impulse and expression, where "catching a groove" sometimes means "cruising on auto pilot". ... Catching Jarrett, Peacock and DeJohnette live is a treat because they are so creatively present tense. ... On Inside Out, that co-operative spirit is delightfully captured, especially the leaders's orgasmic ahhhh's and ooooh's expressed while creating spontaneous art with the rhythm team. It's as if Jarrett himself is simultaneously in awe and charmed by the notes he plays. Like all of his trio CDs, there are moments of lyricism, passion, fun, transcendence. ... Free improv is a dangerous jazz sport where hang-gliding musicians can come crashing to earth in a moment's notice. But with the trio's history of performing together as simpatico musical partners, the results here are magical.
Dan Ouellette, Schwann Inside
One of the authentic glories of the present jazz scene, pianist Jarrett's celebrated trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette are as comfortable delving deep into free-jazz currents as they are caressing a timehonored standard, demonstrated by this inspired live recording capturing four extended high-wire non-thematic improvisations and a singing version of When I Fall in Love.
Steve Futterman, Entertainment Weekly
Atonal, komponiert, improvisiert: Es gibt kaum eine Formation im aktuellen Jazz, die diese Kriterien weniger beachtet als das Trio von Keith Jarrett mit dem Bassisten Gary Peacock und Jack DeJohnette. Mit Inside Out bewegt sich die Band, die bisher überwiegend Jazzstandards präsentierte, auf neuen Wegen. Nichts ist vorgegeben, die Musik bewegt sich konsequent auf den Pfaden des gemeinsamen Gespürs. Freier Jazz, der so ist, wie Jazz schon immer sein wollte: traumhaft harmonierend, vital groovend, spontan, komplex und melodienselig - eine Utopie.
Stefan Hentz, Financial Times Deutschland
Was Jarrett von den perfekten, auf höchstem Niveau gespielten aktuellen Alben seiner Pianokollegen unterscheidet' - Jarrett ist ein Magier. Sein Weg ist das Ziel unabhängig von Formen oder Perfektion. Das Schöpferische, das "Innere", die Künstlerseele, die nach außen dringt, ist seine Mission. Er vereint romantisches Pathos mit dem free spirit anarchischer Musikformen. Jenseits aller kritischen Maßstäbe ist Inside Out ein Meisterstück unorthodoxer Genialität - oder schlicht: wieder ein Stück Musikgeschichte!
Matthias Weiller, Jazzpodium
Auf Inside Out präsentieren sich drei Meister, die hörbar mit allen musikalischen Wassern gewaschen sind. Mühelos behalten sie im Dickicht der Improvisation die Übersicht, ohne dabei das Risiko zu scheuen. ... Ein Konzertmitschnitt von knapp 80 Minuten, der zeigt, dass dieses Trio sich in den luftigen Höhen der musikalisch anspruchsvollen Konversation bestens auskennt. Dort zählt bekanntlich nur das Wesentliche.
Michael Möhring, Jazzthetik
Nur ein einziges Stück ist ein Standard. Die anderen: lange Blues-Meditationen, dann wieder leises Aneinander-heran-Tasten mit fein changierenden Akkorden und Motiven - und schließlich auch wirbelnde, in vielen Nuancen auf- und abebbende Interaktionen im offenen Raum der Töne. Das alles ist die konsequente Fortsetzung von dem, was Fans bereits aus wenigen Intermezzi in den bisherigen "Standards"-Programmen kennen. Nur viel radikaler. ... Mit der enormen Virtuosität dieser drei Musiker ist das auch für den Hörer ungemein spannend: Jarrett & Co erreichen eine Kommunikationsdichte wie selten zuvor. Auch wenn die einzelnen Stücke durchaus unterschiedlich starken Reiz haben - das ist der sichere Weg zu einem neuen Gipfel.
Roland Spiegel, Abendzeitung
Vieles in Keith Jarretts Spiel scheint noch intensiver geworden zu sein, zugleich aber auf eine eindrucksvolle Art abgeklärt, als stehe er vor sich selbst nicht mehr unter virtuos-kreativer Beweisnot. Wie sehr er sich aber auch gleichgeblieben ist, demonstriert der jetzt veröffentlichte Mitschnitt eines Londoner Konzerts im Juli vorigen Jahres in der Royal Festival Hall: "Inside Out". ... Wie sich [die Musik] formt, das demonstrieren die drei kongenialen Mitglieder des Trios gleich im ersten Stück "From the Body". Da entwickelt sich aus einem immer wieder repetierten, winzig-engen Dreitonsplitter des Klaviers geradezu ein Kosmos verschiedener Rhythmen, Motivkombinationen und Zusammenklänge. Oder im Titelsong "Inside Out", bei dessen swingendem Beginn wohl niemand vermutet, dass in den sperrigen Themenfragmenten ein erdiger Blues auf einem Akkord stehen könnte. Das wirkt alles so organisch, als gäbe es nichts Natürlicheres, denn aus ein, zwei Intervallen einen ganzen Berg von Melodien aufzuschichten oder die funktionsharmonische Grundstruktur in ein freies Spiel der atonalen Kräfte umzuwandeln. Aus Bauplänen entstehen so gewissermaßen im Handumdrehen unverrückbare Klanggebäude.Wenn es stimmt, dass das meiste auf dieser CD aus dem Augenblick heraus geschaffen wurde, dann ist die Improvisation eben doch die schnellste Form der Komposition; auch wenn Wolfgang Rihm eher meint, die Komposition sei - in glücklichen Momenten - die langsamste Form der Improvisation.
Wolfgang Sandner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"Inside Out" marks a departure for the group often referred to as the "Standards Trio", or perhaps less a departure than a continuation of a process and a methodology that have always been important to the three players individually. One can say that "Inside Out" picks up where "Changeless" (ECM 1392) left off thirteen years earlier. Recorded at two revelatory concerts at London's Royal Festival Hall in July 2000, it finds the Standards Trio leaving standards behind. True, they arrive at a reading of "When I Fall In Love" to close the proceedings but the route they take is the indirect one. "Inside Out", for most of its duration, is a re-immersion in the swirling waters of free playing.
Reviewing the Festival Hall concert in The Guardian, John Fordham wrote, "The Standards Trio certainly played differently - although there was plenty of hushed rumination, there was also plenty of flat out jamming and animated, one-touch conversation... The Trio, though historically dedicated to the jazz-standards repertoire, has thrown away the maps and flown by the seat of its pants before, and this was just such a performance of startling fluency, of movement between orthodox and free improvising, familiar tunes sometimes appearing like wraiths at the edge of rich ensemble tapestries painted entirely on the fly... A brilliant motivic improviser, Jarrett develops his solos out of his encyclopaedically-informed love of melody, the secret of his success however freely he plays."
Keith Jarrett, from his liner notes: "The trio, thus far, has concentrated mostly on already existing material to use as a vehicle for improvising. But I've always been interested in turning things inside out, so I mentioned to Jack and Gary, during a tour in Europe, that perhaps we would scrap the format - the whole idea of having to use any material... Those of us who experimented a lot with so-called "free" playing in the 60s have years of experience to bring to it again..." Jarrett feels, rightly, that free playing is "an amazingly important part of the true jazz history", though it is an aspect of the music often glossed over by its chroniclers. Pulling the music out of the air makes its special demands: "We need to be even more in tune with each other to play this way, without material; and even more attentive. Every possibility is available if you take away the tunes, but only some are valid under the circumstances. It is only sensitivity to the flux that determines whether the music succeeds or fails."
Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette have a great deal of experience in free playing. Peacock worked all the parameters of the free jazz revolution in New York of the 1960s, from the glorious exaltations of Albert Ayler's "Bells" and "Ghosts" to the Paul Bley trio's brow-furrowed exploration of the free ballad. He ventures frequently into the free zone today, in the company of Marilyn Crispell.
While Peacock was overturning jazz orthodoxy on the East Coast, Jack DeJohnette was involved in parallel activities on Chicago's South Side. In 1963 he was a member of Muhal Richard Abrams' pioneering Experimental Band, whose line-up including fledgeling Art Ensemble of Chicago firebrands Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman. In 1966 in New York, DeJohnette played with John Coltrane, bridging the gap between the Coltrane groups with Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali. In Miles's electric group he brought a different touch to open-form improvising, sometimes alongside Keith Jarrett ("Live/Evil", "Miles At Fillmore" etc). Currently his primary context for improvising without tunes is his duo with British reedman John Surman.
For Keith Jarrett, free playing has meant many things, including what might happen in between the signposts or the exit signs that served as fixed materials in his historically important group with Paul Motian, Charlie Haden and Dewey Redman. His solo concerts have always been free, too, as have, in entirely different ways such projects as "Spirits" or "Book of Ways" or the experimental baroque organ recordings "Hymns/Spheres" and "Incantations" - some of which have very little to do with "jazz". The free playing at the Royal Festival Hall, however, plays plenty of attention to jazz's roots.Keith Jarrett: "It should be obvious when listening to this CD how important the blues are here. We somehow couldn't avoid blues language in London, even in the context of free playing; the blues are so pervasive and true. Sometimes we live the blues even when we're free of the blues."
