Keith Jarrett at Walt Disney Concert Hall
Always a keen observer of audience habits, to put it mildly, a chatty Keith Jarrett couldn’t resist telling a packed Disney Hall that he’d noticed a pattern among jazz crowds lately.
“I remember lines of people waiting to see the new thing,” he said playfully from a lone spotlighted mike stand opposite his piano. “Now, there are lines of people waiting to see old things.”
Of course, when the “old thing” in question is the 64-year-old Jarrett, it’s understood that this habit can be forgiven. Because, even after so many years, how does one begin to unpack what exactly this unique piano wizard can do in concert?
His gift for making an in-the-moment creation sound lyrical has been one of the hallmarks of his career since 1975’s lauded live double-album “The Köln Concert.”
After a stern introduction from Disney Hall’s public address system, warning against cameras, recording devices and, well, coughing, Jarrett began his performance with an uncharacteristically atonal exploration, his long hands darting between low and high notes on the keyboard like excitable birds looking for a secure place to land. Pushing the song through a variety of detours, Jarrett continued his usual habit of half-standing, off-time foot tapping and grunting along with his playing, each a seemingly unconscious attempt to will the song into shape.
It’s a testament to the odd sort of magic that Jarrett is capable of that any of his improvisations can reference sounds and structures from the past yet never overtly become anything other than new, even as the audience feels strangely capable of humming along. On one piece, Jarrett opened with roiling chords that played off his stomping foot and then drove straight into swampy gospel-blues territory, complete with his non-verbal bluesman growl.
For the most part, the crowd was well behaved and in fact eager to please its mercurial guest. After one piece concluded without so much as a peep from the room’s hair-trigger acoustics, one patron proudly yelled to Jarrett that nobody had coughed this time.
“What’s that?” Jarrett asked with a smirk, but there was no response. “He doesn’t want to say it again. I don’t like repeating myself either.”
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