- written while listening to the Köln Concert, La Scala and The Vienna Concert on a train, over and over, without beginning or end -
How would I describe Keith Jarrett's music as he plays his piano in these concerts?
A beauty of muted passion, rather than dramatic and sublime in a Kantian sense - what's bursting in Jarret held in minimalist reign.
Harmony that is off balance. Discordant harmony.
What we hear is not so much the struggle of a man to come into being, but a man making love to the muse who sings through his instrument. We witness effort, yes, in a delerium that encompasses us.
Trills and moments when the music misses a rail, backs up and continues on. Within a constancy of notes that don't go anywhere, become anything, that are unrelenting throughout.
Where the echo of the note is dampened. He knows the terrain, but he's never visited this musical spot before. He learns as he plays. As he plays, he intuits the next notes. Impromptu within a form.
Anyway, we know his music plays him, his whole body, everything, the concert hall, our ears.
We listen in a stillness to Jarrett, but it is the power of his body, its guttural aesthetic, that keeps us there.
We join him in his ecstasy, flying to his muscular, musical spirit. To his glottal harmonies.
Starfire, 11 poems I have recorded with music background, is a free download - Mp3s at a decent 195kbps. It's under a Creative Commons license that allows sharing, and, for the first time, derivative works, though not commercial use.
However, I have been asked a few times about the text of the poems. Some kind listeners have voiced the wish to read the poems along with the recordings. Those poems are in this archive blog, and you certainly may run a search for each one.
Yesterday I quickly put together (with 18 quick revisions) a .pdf with all the poems, comments, paintings and photographs, and it was 26 pages!
No way I'm going to blog anything that long. Hosting the .pdf at my Google sites site for poetry recordings won't work in the long run, either, due to space considerations.
So I offered it in Jamendo's 'Virtual Shop.' This seemed the best way. I get to offer high quality flac files of all the poems, and the 26 page document containing the text of the poems, and the artwork and photos that accompanied each poem when I first shared them with you.
Of the 5 €, I get 2.6 € before the cost of currency exchange and other bank fees. I might make a buck, if that.
So it's not about making money.
What really sold me on offering the text of the poems this way was that, tiny as it is, Jamendo gets a percentage, 2.4 € (the larger the sum you charge, the smaller their percentage, btw).
Jamendo runs no ads on their site. Their revenue comes through licensing fees, royalty payments, percentages from the virtual stores, etc.
How much of a relief is it to visit a site without ads?! They are the largest free music site in the world. The community of musicians and reviewers is a beautiful one, and I spend countless pleasurable hours there each month. They nearly folded early in the year, but a financial backer appeared at the last moment.
I love Jamendo! ♥
I could offer the text of the poems some other way, certainly, but why ignore the company who enables me and many others to share our music, our recordings?
Only a token, yes, my Collector's Edition of Starfire, but a tiny way to thank them for the beautiful music hosting and sharing site they have created and maintain.
click for larger size if you'd like to 'see' the page without actually going to the site
