The bad news is that Keith Jarrett can no longer give concerts. The good news is that there are still a stream of concert recordings being released that bolster an already ginormous catalog full of standout performances. The newest of these (in 2025) is New Vienna (ECM Records), an addition to Jarrett’s legacy as a solo piano wunderkind making up intricate compositions right in front of audiences.
New Vienna gets this title because ECM had already issued an album of a solo piano performance he gave in that historic, Austrian capital city’s Vienna State Opera back in 1991. The Vienna Concert was released the following year to positive reviews.
Jarrett returned there as part of his European solo piano tour of 2016, which will go down as the final one as a pair of strokes permanently sidelined him in 2018. This time playing at the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, Jarrett summoned the ghosts of the great turn-of-the-20th century classical composers who debuted symphonies there, such as Berg, Schoenberg and Webern.
An accomplished classical pianist himself, Jarrett’s improvised solo piano is generally pegged as jazz but there had always been some classical undercurrents showing up in his ruminations because that’s just part of his DNA. You can hear that basic facet of him all throughout and particularly on “Part VI” and “Part VII.”
An entity onto itself, New Vienna mostly eschews the joyful riffs of, say, The Koln Concert and the long moments of contemplation contained within Radiance; here, he’s lurching forward in constant motion with sophisticated melodic developments.
The flowing dissonance of “Part I” is remindful of Cecil Taylor, and Jarrett was one of the only other pianists who could keep coming up with these free jazz expressions on the instrument that doesn’t run its course even after going for a lengthy time. So rich in complexity and executed without flaws, it’s astounding that he came up with it on a dime.
On the other side of the fulcrum stands “Part II,” chords distributed like precious commodities with a funereal affection that turns slightly hopeful toward its conclusion.
For “Part III,” finds a circular theme on the low end of the register and flies in an orbit around it. “Part IV” is an attractive ballad seemingly pulled straight from the pool of American showtunes standards (it’s a tad remindful of “I Loves You Porgy”) but nope, KJ came up with that on the fly.
“Part V” introduces a form that takes on interesting, unfolding variations over the course of the piece as Jarrett complements it with alluring right hand figures. A funky blues erupts with “Part VIII,” while “Part IX” is that joyful gospel, down-home folk side of him coming out. Both executed with the precision of music that was charted.
The evergreen standard “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” closes the set, pointing back to Jarrett’s love for a beautiful strain in the classic style. Perhaps he was also signaling to the audience that this is the spirit he had spent the set trying to capture from not sheet music but from deep inside himself. He strove for the purest form of musical expression and once again for one of the final times, he got there.
*** Keith Jarrett CD’s and vinyl on Amazon ***
- Soft Machine – ‘Thirteen’ (2026) - March 4, 2026
- Devin Gray – ‘Hz Of Gold‘ (2026) - March 2, 2026
- Triple Blind – ‘Cold Walk’ (2026) - February 27, 2026
