The Queen

Remembering Billie Holiday.

Remembering Köln

Improvising will surely guarantee the best satisfaction for you and your listeners, if you're good musician. if you're excellent at your element, improvisation can sometimes be agonizing, especially if you have to perform back to back. All without a plan, a journey without destination, with unforeseeable results.

I remember reading about Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Paco de Lucia and many others, the best musicians Jazz has to offer up to date, who suffered from this phenomenon. Yet their best pieces are improvisations, a burst of ideas, craftfully executed and extraordinarily performed.

For me, the masterpiece of musical improvisation took place in Köln, on January 24, 1975. 

Jarrett, thoroughly exhausted after long hours of driving in his little car and two days of without any sleep, arrives in Köln, half sick and almost completetly desillusioned because of the substandard concert piano (which was used to date only for rehearsals) and performs a yet unprecedented musical wonder for the lucky ears.

Even without knowing these circumstances, this one-hour-session (1:06 Minutes, 4 parts) will always be remembered as one of the best jazz concerts of all time. An tops my list as well.