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Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette: The Out-of-Towners
ByA more pristine recording than Up for It , the new album finds the trio further mining the standards book, this time with the up-tempo "I Can't Believe You're In Love With Me" and Cole Porter's "I Love You," along with the more medium-tempo swing of Gerry Mulligan's "Five Brothers" and the gorgeous ballad, "You've Changed." The most revealing trio piece, however, is the free-style title track, which finds them exploring the blues from the outside-in, much as they did on '01's Inside Out . But whereas the blues figured prominently on all of Inside Out 's pieces but never actually resolved, "The Out-of-Towners" ultimately finds its way into a traditional blues form, albeit a slightly skewed one. One of the trio's greatest strengths is its ability to imply time, with each member providing a piece of it but never explicitly playing it, and "The Out-of-Towners" may be their best recorded example.
The encore, a tranquil yet heartfelt rendition of "It's All In The Game," places Jarrett in a solo context for the first time since '99's The Melody at Night, With You and in a live solo setting for the first time since the '95 recording La Scala. It reflects, more than anything else, the changes Jarrett has gone through since his bout with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in the latter half of the '90s. While as in the moment as the best of his solo recordings, it's also more restrained, remaining perhaps truer to the essence of the piece than Jarrett was wont to staying in earlier solo concerts. It certainly bodes well for next year's solo recording.
Jarrett's trio has become one of the primary benchmarks for piano trio interplay, and it proves that, as Jarrett has said, "it's not the material, it's what you bring to the material." While some have bemoaned the fact that Jarrett appears to have left composition behind, the reality is that with an intuitive interaction that can only come from having played together for over twenty years, Jarrett, Peacock and DeJohnette raise the art of interpretation to a level that defies easy categorization. While they may, for the most part, choose to work existing standards, their playing is so fresh, so vital, that they make each piece sound like a new composition each time they play it.
Track Listing
Intro/I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me; You've Changed; I Love You; The Out-of-Towners; Five Brothers; It's All In The Game
Personnel
Keith Jarrett
pianoKeith Jarrett, piano; Gary Peacock, double-bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums
Album information
Title: The Out-Of-Towners | Year Released: 2004 | Record Label: ECM Records