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Free Soloing

Encounters With Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett concerts often unfold like a running feud: with his piano, with the venue, with the acoustics, with the audience, with his own precarious emotional state.

The piano player is notoriously temperamental, thorny, moody. Jarrett is a compulsive artist, if not a perfectionist, and he can be petulant. He has singled out audience members he suspects of recording his performances (often wrongly) and has been known to stalk off the stage at the disruptive sound of coughing in the crowd—once, in Paris, with Alexander Cockburn and Alya Rea in attendance.

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Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3