Keith Jarrett - My Song (1984 Japanese ECM LP)

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Sleeve: NM
Obi: None

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Keith Jarrett - My Song Vinyl LP - 1984 Japanese ECM Pressing

• The second and most celebrated studio album by Jarrett's European Quartet, six Jarrett originals recorded at Talent Studio, Oslo in November 1977
• Jan Garbarek's tenor and soprano saxophone as melodic counterpoint to Jarrett's piano, Palle Danielsson on bass and Jon Christensen on drums completing one of ECM's most sympathetic rhythm sections
  
• 1984 Japanese ECM pressing on Polydor K.K.

Recorded at Talent Studio in Oslo on October 31 and November 1, 1977 and released on ECM in June 1978, My Song is the second studio album by Jarrett's European Quartet, the ensemble he had first convened for Belonging in 1974. The four musicians, Jarrett on piano, Jan Garbarek on tenor and soprano saxophone, Palle Danielsson on bass and Jon Christensen on drums, had developed a working relationship and a shared musical language in the three years between the two records, and the settled trust between them is audible throughout the six Jarrett originals that make up the album. Where the music on Belonging had a quality of discovery, My Song is more assured, the compositions more fully realised and the interplay more fluent. Garbarek's saxophone, here drawing on both the folk-inflected lyricism of his Norwegian background and the post-bop vocabulary he had developed through his own recordings, provides melodic counterpoint to Jarrett's piano rather than competing with it, the two instruments moving in and out of the foreground across tracks that range from the opening "Questar" through to the closing "The Journey Home", which passes through several distinct moods in its ten minutes. Jarrett occasionally plucks the strings inside the piano for added percussion, and Danielsson is given room for extended bass solos that hold their own as compositional statements. Engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug, who was responsible for the sonic character of ECM's studio recordings throughout this period, and produced by Manfred Eicher, the album reached No. 17 on the Billboard jazz chart on its original release.

Released in Japan in January 1984 on ECM Records (25MJ 3304) and manufactured by Polydor K.K., this pressing presents the album in the label's characteristic spare design. The combination of Kongshaug's engineering and ECM's insistence on acoustic, unprocessed sound makes this one of the more demanding tests for a well-set-up system, the piano, saxophone, bass and drums spread across the stereo field with a clarity and separation that rewards careful listening. For collectors building an ECM section, My Song sits alongside Belonging as the essential document of Jarrett's European Quartet.