New Vienna is the fourth concert recording to be released from Keith Jarrett’s final European solo tour. It follows Munich 2016, Budapest Concert and Bordeaux Concert. Why New Vienna? As Jarrett aficionados will know, his discography already includes a legendary Vienna Concert (recorded at the Vienna State Opera) whose music, he once claimed, spoke “the language of the flame itself,” after long years of “courting the fire.” Keith Jarrett’s 2016 return to the Austrian capital brought the flames of inspiration to another historic location with lively acoustic properties, the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, where, at the start of the previous century, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern had premiered works that challenged and changed the course of modern music.
New Vienna, shaping its new music in the moment, is near-encyclopedic in scope. The long forms that typified Jarrett’s early solo concert journeys – from Bremen/Lausanne and Köln to the first Vienna Concert and beyond – had given way, in this concluding phase of his performing life, to shows comprised of shorter, self-contained and contrasting pieces which, in their totality, frequently attained an impromptu suite-like character. And so it was at the Musikverein on July 9, 2016. Part I – the first of nine parts – is a spontaneous whirlwind of sound, swirling, dense and complex – Impetuous as force of nature. Part II floats chords in silence, and slowly draws out a plangent melody. Rhythm is to the fore in Part III, an outstanding instance of Jarrett’s capacity to develop separate and interweaving patterns with each hand.
Part IV is hymnic, trailing clouds of glory, Part V pure balladry channelled from the ether. Part VI refracts the lyrical impulse, rendering it more abstract, and Part VII is a tender song one might imagine rescored for the Belonging quartet. Part VIII gets down to basics with the blues, and Part IX, with its hints of both gospel and country, reminds us of how all-embracing Jarrett’s musical visions could be. With “Somewhere Over The Rainbow,” a favorite encore choice, phrased a little differently from the splendid versions heard on La Scala, a Multitude of Angels and Munich 2016, Jarrett concludes another exceptional performance.
New Vienna is issued as Keith Jarrett turns 80. Although he has not played live since 2017, public interest in his solo music remains high, with this year’s 50th anniversary of The Köln Concert also generating worldwide media attention.
Jarrett’s association with ECM dates from November 1971, when he and producer Manfred Eicher first collaborated on the hugely influential solo piano album Facing You, eight short pieces which, in Eicher’s words, “hold together like a suite.” The album also prefigured the solo piano concerts which would be such a defining aspect of Jarrett’s career.
In 2016, Keith Jarrett’s final European solo piano tour took place. To date, four concert recordings have been released from the tour: Munich 2016, Budapest Concert, Bordeaux Concert and most recently, New Vienna. Each of them shows Jarrett at the peak of his powers, creating new music in real time, continuing to develop the solo piano idiom that he had initiated in the early 1970s.
In 2018, health issues brought Jarrett’s performing life to a premature end. In consultation with him, ECM has continued to release some very remarkable albums by the great pianist, drawing on a treasure trove of recordings made over the decades, and spanning a wide range of genres.
These have included more music from the Deer Head Inn, the intimate venue in the Pocono Mountains which, back in 1961, had given Keith Jarrett his very first gig as leader of a piano trio. The Old Country features Jarrett with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, conveying– in a 1992 show – “what jazz is all about”, in Keith’s words. In 2025, the inspired Deer Head performance was reprised on the vinyl box set At The Deer Head Inn – The Complete Recordings.
In 2025, the 50th anniversary of The Köln Concert generated a new wave of worldwide media attention on Jarrett’s unique achievements. And, as he turns 80, the release of New Vienna reconfirms that there is, still, nothing else in jazz or contemporary music that resembles a Keith Jarrett solo concert. As the committee citation for the Polar Music Prize (one of Jarrett’s many awards) noted, “Through a series of brilliant solo performances and recordings that demonstrate his utterly spontaneous creativity, Keith Jarrett has simultaneously lifted piano improvisation as an art form to new, unimaginable heights.”
