Celebrate Keith Jarrett Köln Concert 50th & Big Ears Festival 2025
Keith Jarrett, Venezia, Teatro Malibran, 24/07/2001. Concerto in trio con Gary Peacock e Jack De Johnette
Nella foto: Keith Jarrett durante le prove
Weekend listeners celebrate another 50th Anniversary. This one is the 1975 release of The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett. This is the album that unleashed the solo piano boom, especially in New Age and neo-classical music, that is still going today, for better or worse.
Keith Jarrett: All pianists thought then that they should so something solo whether or not they had the vaguest notion that to play solo is different than playing without a rhythm section which is what so many of them sounded like. And now so many of them sound like the Kohn Concert has permanently lobotomized something. I’m just glad that didn’t happen to me.
That‘s Keith Jarrett, we’ll hear him talking about the The Köln Concert, improvisation and why he sometimes sings along, kinda, with his playing. We’ll also hear a big chunk of The Köln Concert. It’s all ahead on Echoes from PRX.
Weekend listeners also hear our annual interview with Ashley Capps, the founder of Big Ears Festival. He also created Bonaroo and resurrected Moogfest. We cover Big Ears because they often have a lot of Echoes artists and they are just the best, most civilized and most surprising festival in America.
Ashley: what we’re trying to avoid is the bland and the innocuous, know, are just things that, know, you know, just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, you know. That doesn’t really interest me.
Big Ears is anything but bland. It will take place in Knoxville, TN, March 26-29, 2026. There will be over 200 acts including Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, SUSS, Pat Metheny, multiples of John Zorn, Hania Rani, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin and Nels Cline. The first hour of Echoes will be all music from the forthcoming Big Ears Festival 2026 and our interview with Ashley Capps, who talks about putting the festival together. Ears are wide open on Echoes. 