After two volumes of studio standards, now the predictable live set – six more standards given the Jarrett treatment before a Parisian audience in July last year. As before the mix is of the great and the less well-known, all slow to mid-tempo numbers played with a deceptive approach that is sometimes lightweight but never throwaway in its impact. Falling In Love and The Way You Look send Jarrett flying around the keyboard, inebriated by the melody and buoyed along on the motoring bass of Peacock and the frothy drumming of DeJohnette, while Stella opens with a lengthy piano solo that does more than justice to an overfamiliar and usually overplayed tune.
The trio maintains a perfect equilibrium throughout, noticeably when bass and drums slide so gently in behind the piano on the contemplative opening to Too Young, and throughout The Old Country, a Curtis Lewis/Nat Adderley tune whose complexities force the trio to work harder to get inside the melody than on some of the other, more simply structured pieces.
Jarrett has for the moment abandoned his solo piano improvisations in favour of trio performances, but I for one miss the excesses of his solo work, finding the material here too unsubstantial for Jarrett’s particular skill to transform and transcend. But perhaps a set of modern standards by the likes of Coltrane or Coleman might put that to rights.
Discography
Stella By Starlight; The Wrong Blues; Falling In Love With Love (26.39) – Too Young To Go Steady; The Way You Look Tonight; The Old Country (22.30)
Keith Jarrett (p); Gary Peacock (b); Jack DeJohnette (d). Recorded live, Palais des Congres, Paris. 2/7/85.
(ECM 1317)
