Somewhere

Ezra Pound once said that the duty of a poet was to take experience and “make it new.” By that definition, Keith Jarrett is, without doubt, a poet of the piano. Like few others, he can take old tunes and make them new, embroidering unexpected riffs on old cloth, transforming tired melodies into flights of imagination. When he plays, you can hear him exclaiming or moaning in the background—the sound of creativity as it happens. I’d have to go way back in time to come up with a jazz-piano-trio album as good as this one. Jarrett is, of course, a giant of his instrument, and of the genre, but his virtuosity doesn’t automatically ensure a home run every time he comes to the plate. Here, however, he hits it out of the park, with reinvention of songs I might have assumed were beyond reinvention. How, for instance, did Jarrett find new life in a standard as thoroughly probed and prodded as “Stars Fell on Alabama”? And his extended improvisation on “Somewhere,” the old Bernstein/Sondheim number from West Side Story proves to be fertile ground for Jarrett’s inventions. If you think jazz has grown boring, check out this album before you give up on this rich American music.