Jan Garbarek / Keith Jarrett / Palle Danielsson / Jon Christensen - Belonging (1974 ECM Vinyl LP)

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Jan Garbarek / Keith Jarrett / Palle Danielsson / Jon Christensen - Belonging | Vinyl LP - 1974 Japanese ECM/Trio Records (PAP-9011)

Keith Jarrett had been running two parallel careers since the early 1970s: an American trio and solo practice alongside an entirely different quartet with European musicians. He had first noticed Jan Garbarek while touring Europe with Charles Lloyd's group; Garbarek was in George Russell's band. Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen were the rhythm section of the Garbarek-Bobo Stenson Quartet, whose Witchi-Tai-To had been recorded five months before Belonging. Jarrett knew exactly what he was assembling.

He wrote all six pieces specifically for these four musicians. The structure alternates: a fast piece, then a ballad, then a fast piece on Side A; a short ballad, then a fast piece, then a long ballad on Side B. "Spiral Dance" opens with Garbarek's tenor over Christensen's ride cymbal, the band at full tempo from the first bar. "Blossom" stretches to twelve minutes, Jarrett's piano sustaining long melodic lines while Garbarek enters on soprano saxophone with a tone closer to a folk instrument than a jazz horn. "'Long As You Know You're Living Yours" closes Side A with the kind of propulsive energy that rarely appeared on ECM recordings in 1974.

"Belonging," the title track, is the album's shortest piece at just over two minutes. It functions as a threshold between the two sides rather than a standalone composition. "The Windup" is the hardest-swinging piece Jarrett recorded for ECM, Danielsson's bass walking hard, Christensen driving from underneath. "Solstice" closes the album at thirteen minutes. Garbarek's opening soprano note is slightly off pitch, deliberately so, and the piece unfolds from that intentional tension.

Manfred Eicher produced. Jarrett insisted on first takes throughout, and the sense of spontaneity that carries the record is not an illusion. This is the 1974 Japanese Trio Records pressing (PAP-9011).