Keith Jarrett Drags Our Asses to Church
The art of playing the wrong instrument
Somewhere out there in the night is an animal with electric eyes waiting to devour you
Jazz piano isn’t for everyone
As the story goes, Miles Davis once stopped a mid-twenties Keith Jarrett in a jazz club to tell him he was playing the wrong instrument. Jarrett responded by saying he was relieved someone else understood that. The two men went on to play together in stints, with both Davis’s touring band and his early ’70s sextet. Jarrett played piano when the two met, and he still plays piano now. Davis paired him on the keys with Chick Corea, giving his live tour at the time the kind of bebop backcourt that puts jerseys in rafters. So, as is often the case when it comes to genius, the comment about the instrument wasn’t a comment about the instrument. It was dharma. A legendary moment of game recognizing game. Jarrett’s career wouldn’t calm down for five decades, and neither would the Lao Tzu-esque anecdotes. One of his personal mantras became, “Don't follow in the footsteps of the wise, seek what they have sought,” an enharmonic rendition of Matsuo Bashō’s famous line. In a 2014 interview with …
