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ABSTRACT
Keith Jarrett’s Sun Bear Concerts, performed in Japan in 1976, consists of five concerts of improvised music, each concert boasting two Parts that traverse multiple distinct styles, from blues to ballad, romantic lyricism to frenetic atonality, and minimalism to lilting groove, the latter being the style most often associated with Jarrett. But that style has also been criticized for its apparent uneventful repetitiveness. This paper attempts to demonstrate that, while the groove sections may be categorized under the broad umbrella of “groove” style, each of Jarrett’s grooves is unique, musically nuanced, and creatively structured. After summarizing the concept of groove as defined in the recent literature, the paper introduces the four-phase “anatomy” of groove—the musical techniques by which Jarrett gets to the groove, gets in the groove, plays in the groove, and then gets out of the groove. Each phase of the groove process is exemplified with reference to the five concerts; the final part of the paper consists of more detailed analyses of the entire four-phase groove processes in Part (movement) I of the Kyoto concert, the first of the Sun Bear Concerts.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks go to the two anonymous readers, whose close reading and numerous comments were most helpful in refining this manuscript for publication.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Bill Milkowski, quoted in Mark Joyce, “Who’s Overrated? Who’s Underrated? The Critics Sound Off,” Jazz Times (September, 1997).
2 In this overview, I have refrained from citing empirical studies on music perception and cognition. While this literature is important, vast, and compelling, even a modest sampling of the range of empirical studies is beyond the scope of the present paper.
3 It is essential that readers have access to a recording of the Sun Bear Concerts while working through the analyses in this paper. Recordings are available through any number of streaming services. Additionally, readers will soon discover that I have omitted notated transcriptions of the musical excerpts analyzed in the paper. I have done this deliberately, preferring instead to provide more “qualitative” analyses, thereby allowing—even requiring—readers to grapple with/“assemble” the groove patterns themselves, by ear. In the Preface to the transcription of The Köln Concert (Tokyo: Schott Japan Company Limited, 1991), Keith Jarrett discusses at some length the problems (both literal and figurative) of attempting to notate an improvisation of the complexity of that recording. In the end, notwithstanding attempts at accuracy of transcription, Jarrett suggests that such an attempt “cannot reveal the real sense of [the music] as an improvisation, where listening is what determines the music’s strength.” (Emphasis in original.) And, that “[t]here is much more going on on the recording, but this ‘going on’ does not always translate into notes on paper.” In my view, the same sentiments hold true for The Sun Bear Concerts.
4 In their chapter, “Groove,” in The Oxford Handbook of Critical Concepts in Music Theory (Oxford University Press, 2018) https://DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190454746.013.17, Guilherme Schmidt Câmara and Anne Danielsen posit three understandings of groove: (1) groove as pattern and performance, (2) groove as pleasure and appeal to movement, and (3) groove as a state of being. This paper will explore the first of these through analyses of specific groove sections, and the second especially through exploration of multi-levelled syncopation in Jarrett’s groove sections; the third sense will be understood to be the state of being of Jarrett himself during these extended groove sections, as well as the state of being of attentive listeners.
5 Steven Feld and Charles Keil, Music Grooves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, 1994), 109.
6 Ibid, 111.
7 Ibid, 23.
8 Ibid, 22.
9 Bruce Horner and Thomas Swiss, quoted in Mark Abel, Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured Time (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015), 19.
10 Tiger C. Roholt, Groove: A Phenomenology of Rhythmic Nuance (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 10.
11 Roholt, Groove.
12 Ibid, 27, emphasis in original.
13 Ibid, 73.
14 Mark Abel, Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured Time (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015), 24.
15 Ibid, 26.
16 Ibid, 29.
17 Ibid, 32.
18 Ibid, 43.
19 Ibid, 59.
20 Ibid, 51.
21 Peter Elsdon, Keith Jarrett’s The Koln Concert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 68–9.
22 Ibid, 70.
23 Matthew Butterfield discusses at length the effect of anacrusis on the perception of groove. He, too, starts with equal beat distribution and, while he generates unequal divisions through rhythmic shifting at a single level—whereas I posit unequal divisions as the result of hearing an unaltered pattern through the aural lens of a slower beat pulse—he nicely illustrates the varied effects of anacrusis as the note of anticipation becomes shorter. See Example 8 a, b, and c in his “The Power of Anacrusis: Engendered Feeling in Groove-Based Musics,” Music Theory Online 12, no. 4 (December, 2006), 6.
24 This is consistent with Butterfield’s analysis of anacrusis cited above. He, too, concludes, with respect to the anacrusis of a 64th note in duration in his Example 8 d and e, that the 64th note is so short that its precise duration as an individual note is difficult to hear; rather, he suggests, it will be “experienced on top of the beat within the range of expressive microtiming.” See his “The Power of Anacrusis,” 6.
25 Elsdon describes this style in detail, which he refers to as “Ballad,” in his “Style and the Improvised in Keith Jarrett’s Solo Concerts,” Jazz Perspectives 2, no. 1 (May, 2008), 58.
26 William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 35ff.
27 Ibid, 37.
28 Ibid, 40.
29 Getting out of a groove is what Elsdon finds particularly intriguing about Jarrett’s improvisations, and after raising the issue of expectations brought on by the harmonic and rhythmic stability of the groove, he homes in on the central question regarding the breaking free of the boundaries established by that stability: “Does the improviser simply stop and abandon the groove, or does he attempt to gradually subvert or transform a part of the texture in order to effect a transition of sorts? See his “Style and the Improvised,” 64.
30 Câmara and Danielsen express this partnership nicely: “A groove mode of listening … is not directed toward a goal (such as tonic closure); instead, it demands one’s presence in the groove’s here and now. Put differently, when one is in [this groove mode of listening], one moves together with the groove—in a sense, co-producing it.” See their “Groove,” 4.
31 Peter Elsdon points out that other writers have criticized Jarrett for what they regard as his overly repetitive, unchanging (and presumably uneventful) improvisations, particularly the sections in what he (Elsdon) refers to as the “Blues Vamp Style.” But, he adds, much of that criticism is founded on an antiquated notion of aesthetics, in this case, one that seizes on absence rather than presence. See his “Style and the Improvised,” 62.
32 Keith Jarrett, “Interview by Doug Watson,” YouTube Video, 2:14 (Part 1), 1999, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSdc9iyZxCI
33 Keith Jarrett, “MEA interview at the Jazz masters Awards Ceremony and Concert,” YouTube Video, 2:27. January 13, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDbOKHOuy9M.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Charles D. Morrison
Charles D. Morrison recently retired from the Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada), where he taught music theory, analysis, and music aesthetics for 34 years. He served as Dean of the Faculty from 1999 to 2010. His early research focused on classical music from the first part of the 20th century, particularly the string quartets of Béla Bartók. More recently, he has presented and published papers in the areas of music aesthetics, modes of musical listening, and music temporality. Many of these research threads have intersected in his analytical approach to the solo improvisations of Keith Jarrett, his current research focus.