2001 was a vintage year for the Jarrett trio, as three outstanding live albums – “The Out-of-Towners”, “Always Let Me Go” and “My Foolish Heart”- have already shown. “Yesterdays”, registered at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Festival Hall, is a fourth 2001 concert recording, with an all-standards programme and a strong emphasis on bebop, including Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple from the Apple”, “Shaw’nuff” by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and Horace Silver’s “Strollin’”. There is also an exhilarating splash of ragtime in the shape of “You Took Advantage Of Me”, and beautiful ballads including the title track and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” (both from Jerome Kern’s pen). As a bonus: the album concludes with a radiant “Stella by Starlight” captured at a soundcheck: Jarrett, Peacock and DeJohnette playing just for the joy of it…
Yesterdays
Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette
- 1Strollin'
08:12 - 2You Took Advantage Of Me
10:12 - 3Yesterdays
08:55 - 4Shaw'nuff
06:10 - 5You've Changed
07:55 - 6Scrapple From The Apple
09:01 - 7A Sleepin' Bee
08:17 - 8Intro / Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
08:32 - 9Stella By Starlight
08:04
The Absolute Sound, Jazz Recording of the Issue
Classica-Répértoire, L’événement jazz du mois
The trio of pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette passed the quarter-century mark last year. And the accumulated wisdom continues to pay dividends. This live recording boasts a wealth of great standards from Tin Pan Alley to bebop, and represents a good mix between celebrating the melodies and freeing them. Jarrett … can change eras in an instant, finishing up Richard Rodgers’ “You Took Advantage of Me” with a sudden spasm of stride piano. Or taking on Dizzy Gillespie’s “Shaw ‘Nuff” like a player piano set to explode. The energy rocks the audience. …
Peacock provides warm backing throughout, while DeJohnette proves a surprisingly economical drummer who affords these tunes another layer of elegance.
Karl Stark, The Philadelphia Inquirer
The chief surprises lurking in this absorbing 75-minute set are the delightfully unpredictable musical twists and turns the threesome negotiates within this familiar material. … The overall temperament is upbeat and buoyant. And while the piano legacies of Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, and Bill Evans are unmistakably present in Jarrett’s dazzling right-hand runs, judiciously powerful left hand, and harmonic imagination, it’s the magical rhythmic interplay of the longtime mates that establishes new precedents.
Derk Richardson, The Absolute Sound
Charm and persuasion mark pianist Keith Jarrett’s 2001 trio performance… Per usual, the musicians dig into pop evergreens and jazz classics with particular élan. Horace Silver’s “Strollin’” and Victor Young’s “Stella by Starlight” are medium-tempo swingers where Jarrett unfurls an array of garlands and miniatures boasting rich melody and a foot-tapping swing, his efforts underpinned by Peacock’s saucy bass lines and DeJohnette’s delicious drum chatter.
Zan Stewart, The Star-Ledger
This set of show-tunes and jazz vehicles is taken from their 2001 trip to Japan. It reflects the group’s playful lightness and softer touch, as well as their pleasure in exploring such early styles as stride piano – but it also sustains Jarrett’s legendary capacity for improvising as if bar-lines and chorus-breaks were simply there to be brushed aside.
John Fordham, The Guardian
The evidence is that this is the fourth live set to appear from 2001, which was their self-proclaimed annus mirabilis. Where other albums have flirted with ragtime, stride and group improvisation, this is a regular day at the office for Jarrett, the bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette. Jazz standards, show tunes and bop classics are lovingly buffed up, retooled and sold to us anew.
John Bungey, The Times
Jarrett bewegt sich als Interpret des Jazz-Kanons hier auf der Höhe seines Könnens, und seine Begleiter – vielmehr: Partner – stehen ihm in nichts nach. … Diesmal beginnt die Demonstration pianistische Souplesse und filigranen Interplays mit „Strollin’“ von Horace Silver, führt mit dem heiter-verzweifelten „You Took Advantage of Me“ von Rodgers & Hart zur titelstiftenden Ballade von Jerome Kern und zeigt mit „Shaw’nuff“ sowie „Scrapple from the Apple“, dass Jarrett auch den Bebop Charlie Parkers und Dizzy Gillespies ganz verinnerlicht hat. Er agiert geradezu ausgelassen und bleibt doch in jedem Augenblick wach, umsichtig, präzis. … Eine Sternstunde.
Manfred Papst, Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag
Das geniale Trio Jarrett, Peacock, DeJohnette in einem Konzertmitschnitt von 2001. Zärtlich und zugänglich, melodisch und verspielt. Ein Highlight.
Tobias Schmitz, Stern
Die drei praktizieren die Kunst des Piano-Trios in höchster Vollendung. Sie treffen sich jeweils für so wenige Wochen im Jahr, dass wir keinen Ton missen möchten. … Im Übrigen denken die drei den Bebop weiter, mit Horace Silvers „Strollin’“, Parker/Gillespies „Shaw nuff“ und Parkers „Scrapple from the Apple“. Und sie erfinden Unterkellerungen und Überbauten zu Standards, die eigentlich als einstöckige Zweckbauten geplant waren: „Yesterdays“, „You’ve Changed“, „Smoke Gets in Your Eyes“. Nicht neu, nicht alt. Gegenwärtig.
Peter Rüedi, Weltwoche
Der Pianist scheint wie entfesselt: Er zelebriert regelrecht den Moment, in dem die Musik entsteht – so, als wäre dieser Moment eben doch kein Mythos. Metrische und rhythmische Parameter bestimmen die Improvisationsmusik des heute wohl wichtigsten Jazz-Piano-Trios ebenso wie melodischer Einfallsreichtum und harmonische Ergänzungen aus dem Stegreif.
Martin Laurentius, Jazzthing
Auch diese CD begeistert wieder vor allem durch die Kombination von gesanglich-liedhafter Einfachheit, emotionaler, oft fast hymnischer Intensität und mitreißender Virtuosität sowie durch die schier unerschöpfliche Fülle und kristalline, betörende Schönheit seiner Melodien.
Hans-Dieter Heistrüvers, Jazzpodium
Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays” speaks of ‘Days I knew as happy sweet/ Sequestered days/ Olden days/Golden days...’”. 2001, clearly, was a golden year for the Jarrett/Peacock/ DeJohnette trio, rich in exceptional performances; “Yesterdays” is the fourth album culled from their 2001 touring. In the chronology it belongs alongside “Always Let Me Go”, also recorded in Tokyo in April of that year, and it balances that album’s exploratory earnestness with a light and often playful touch that also brings forth music of great creativity – this time focussed and marshalled inside the ‘standards’ tradition. As Jarrett said to the Los Angeles Times recently, “We know how musical these songs are... Jazz musicians don’t have to always break down doors: there’s music inside the rooms too.”
This particular set’s emphasis on bebop embraces Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple from the Apple”, “Shaw’nuff” by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Horace Silver’s “Strollin’”, and a piece often associated with Dexter Gordon, “You’ve Changed”. The show tune “You Took Advantage Of Me”, which in a more rigorously ‘ragtime’ version would be a highlight of the Montreux performance issued as “My Foolish Heart”, is also heard here, and there are beautiful ballad interpretations including two Jerome Kern songs, “Yesterdays” and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”, as well as Harold Arlen’s mid-tempo “A Sleepin’ Bee”(which Gary Peacock memorably played with Bill Evans in 1964).
Tracks one through eight were recorded at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Hall. The album concludes with a rare ECM bonus track - an ‘audio verité’ account of a piece taped at a soundcheck a week earlier, at Orchard Hall. In this context, too, with no audience present, the trio players give their hearts, energies and full attention to the music.
The release of “Yesterdays” follows the 25th anniversary of the trio in 2008, a celebration marked by intensified touring activity, much press attention, and a number of historical releases from ECM – two double DVDs (“Standards I/II” and “Live In Japan”) as well as the widely-acclaimed three CD box “Setting Standards”, which documented the birth of the Standards project in the now-legendary New York recordings of 1983. Additionally, three of Jarrett’s titles – “Standards Live”, “Bye Bye Blackbird” and the solo “Facing You” - were reissued in ECM’s popular ‘Touchstones’ series. This banner year for Jarrett was capped by his induction into Down Beat’s Hall of Fame in December.
The work with the trio goes on, of course. As Keith Jarrett says, "If you meet the perfect other two players for your needs in a musical jazz situation, why would you force yourself to go around the corner and find other people to play with?"
“Yesterdays” is issued simultaneously on CD and vinyl (180 gram pressing): it’s the first new ECM vinyl release from ECM in 15 years.
