Keith Jarrett - Facing You (1972 German ECM Original LP)

Vinyl: EX
Sleeve: VG (Some lamination damage and creases)

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Keith Jarrett - Facing You | Vinyl LP - 1972 German ECM Original (ECM 1017 ST, Schallplattenfabrik Pallas GmbH)

Keith Jarrett had recorded for Atlantic and Columbia before Manfred Eicher signed him to ECM in 1971. The label was barely two years old. Eicher booked the Arne Bendiksen Studio in Oslo and placed Jarrett at a piano alone with Jan Erik Kongshaug engineering. The result was eight pieces, no overdubs, no editing, no interruption. Everything on the record is the first and only take.

The title refers to the confrontation between performer and instrument in the absence of an ensemble. No rhythm section to lean on, no other voice to respond to, only the piano and what Jarrett could bring to it. The pieces move through different registers without announcing the transitions. "In Front" opens with a melodic figure and develops it through harmonic variations that never quite return to where they started. "Ritooria" is slower, Jarrett holding individual notes longer and letting the sustain define the space. "Lalene" is the most openly bluesy piece on Side A. Side B opens with "My Lady; My Child," written for his wife and son, more lyrical and less exploratory than the other pieces and melody dominant. "Landscape for Future Earth," "Starbright" and "Vapallia" move progressively outward. "Semblence" closes the record quietly.

Eicher and Kongshaug captured the piano's full acoustic range, close and immediate. The ECM sound at this early stage in the label's history was still being defined, and this album was part of that definition. Original German pressing, pressed at Pallas, in a laminated sleeve.