The Night Beat — 3 is the Magic Number

3 is the magic number. As in 1973, 1993 and 2023. And maybe 1963 or 1983 time permitting.

Join Doug Crane on Wednesday, November 22 for music from Keith Jarrett’s Solo Concerts: Bremen-Lausanne. Recorded live in the spring and summer of 1973, it was the first of his many solo concert albums.

It’s been re-released by ECM Records this year but what you’ll hear is my 50-year-old copy pressed on West German vinyl. As we’ll be playing an extended excerpt, it will comprise the bulk of the 9 pm hour.

A press release from DL Media has this to say about the album: “Fifty years ago reception for the Solo-Concerts music – more than two hours of solo piano improvisations – was overwhelmingly positive around the world: the set was showered in awards and hailed as Album of the Year in Time magazine, The New York Times, DownBeat and Stereo Review in the US, Jazz Forum in Poland, and Swing Journal in Japan. In Germany, it won the Großer Deutsche Schallplattenpreis. The enthusiasm hasn’t dimmed – in a recent survey of Jarrett’s complete oeuvre in the UK’s Mojo magazine, the Bremen-Lausanne box set was voted #1: “This is the ne plus ultra of the solo live Jarrett concert in all its improvisational glory.”

Also from 1973: a track from the Gil Evans big band album “Svengali” that features alto saxophonist David Sanborn, the Bill Evans Trio recorded live at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay, CA, something TBD from the CTI label and a recent cover of “Superstition”, one of Stevie Wonder’s hit records of that year.

From 1993 we’ll take a track from one of my Desert Island Discs, the joint project of Vince Mendoza, Arif Mardin, the WDR big band and Los Jovenes Flamenco. If you’ve wondered what it might sound like if someone combined Miles Davis’ “Sketches in Spain” with the Gipsy Kings, this album is a pretty good approximation.

And we’ll hear a track from “Love in Exile”, one of my favorite recordings of 2023. Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily are the members of this recent Grammy nominee.

Be sure to tune in on Wednesday, November 22 at 8 pm for The Nightbeat with Doug Crane on KUVO JAZZ…the Oasis in the City!

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