Part 2 brings us into a noticeably more resonant space, and is like multiple radios broadcasting some morbid ragtime catharsis. His fingers seem to double their strength in numbers, spreading wide with ecstatic cause, all the while reliving a poignant memory in reverse. With every sweep of a cupped hand, every kick of a calloused foot, we are brought nearer a world where sound takes the place of air. He dives deep into the notion of depth itself, where sounds are muted as much by the water as by the careful transparency that defines it. He begins to tread water, taking in his aural surroundings like a compass simultaneously pointing in every direction. Every rise and fall is vividly etched into our minds as he articulates the grace that so consumes him. With patience, it becomes ecstatically uplifting, scaling a virtual ladder of Steve Reichian phases before plunging into an exhilarating vamp over which Jarrett sings and dances his blissful way. This is music to make one weep, for like tears it drips from the eyes and tastes like the sea. Expulsive chording animates this newborn organism with premature self-awareness. Jarrett introduces some jazzier ornaments into these tectonic elegies until he reaches what sounds like a Philip Glass motif broken open, maps drawn from its essence in half-note rolls. Like all such things, it grows all the more affecting as it transforms into something else entirely. Part 1 opens in absolute heaven with I daresay the most spellbinding music ever elicited from a piano. In light of this, a more fitting line might read: Keith Jarrett is music itself. Within this modestly typographed grey box beats one of ECM’s profoundest creative hearts. The result was a 10-LP set, now telescoped to six CDs, that must be heard to be believed. Over the course of two weeks in November of 1976, Jarrett laid his hands to keys in seven major Japanese cities for an historic series of improvised concerts (not all of which are included in this recording). And while such a move does have a certain charm, if not arrogance, I can only hope that the following attempts to transcribe what Keith Jarrett’s Sun Bear Concerts say to this listener might convey even the humblest fraction of the wonders therein. Engineers: Okihiko Sugano and Shinji Ohtsukaīefore beginning this review, I imagined writing one line and one line only: Let the music speak for itself.
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