Keith Jarrett

Sleeper ECM*****

For a band destined to be so influential, led by a pianist who is certainly not shy of the recording process, Keith Jarrett’s so-called European quartet was parlously under-documented.

Two studio albums, Belonging (1974) and My Song (1977) and a single live recording, Nude Ants (1979) made at New York’s Village Vanguard, were all that Jarrett and producer Manfred Eicher saw fit to release at the time. But the studio albums in particular were of such a high quality, so totally original in their conception, so utterly, heart-openingly beautiful, they were enough to establish the quartet as one of the most influential acoustic units to emerge from the otherwise fusion-soaked 1970s.

Formed around Jarrett’s bravura playing and writing, the group featured three then little-known Scandinavian musicians: saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen. The Europeans seemed to have a liberating effect on the Pennsylvania pianist.

Even now, with more than 50 other ECM recordings to his name, among them some of the most celebrated jazz albums of the post-Coltrane era, Jarrett stands out for his playing with the European quartet – joyous, exuberant flights of pure melodic invention, imbued with a bright-eyed romanticism that is rare in modern jazz.

Ten years after the quartet played their last note, another live album, Personal Mountains (1989), recorded in Tokyo on their final tour in 1979, emerged to more breathless acclaim.

And that, it seemed, was that. So Sleeper, a double CD which presents a single performance from that same tour in its entirety, is aptly named, and fans of the group will wonder how a recording of this quality could have slumbered so long in ECM’s vault. If anything, Sleeper is better than the other two live recordings, with a respectful Tokyo audience holding its collective breath and engineer Jan Erik Konshaug, the man largely responsible for the fabled ECM sound, at the sound desk.

Mixed earlier this year by Konshaug and Eicher, the sound is pristine and the intervening decades have not dimmed the music's brilliance. Indeed, it sounds so fresh it might have been recorded yesterday, which is surely the mark of truly great music. ecmrecords.com