CD ECM Records Keith Jarrett : A Multitude Of Angels

2016
Keith Jarrett - Pian

A Multitude of Angels is a 4-CD set of recordings from a series of solo concerts in Italy in October 1996, documenting the conclusion of Keith Jarrett’s experiments with long-form improvisation in performances from Modena, Ferrara, Turin, and Genova. “These were the last concerts I played having no breaks within each set,” Jarrett explains in his liner notes. The arc of the music is characteristically comprehensive: “Jazz is ever present here, alongside my deep closeness with classical music (modern and ancient, Ives and Bach).”

There are delectable passages throughout, and plenty of Jarrett’s signature stamping grooves – as on Modena’s rocking vamp and the funky blues encore that ends Genova. Jarrett has always favoured exhaustive documentation, but the intensity, variety, and astonishing technical command of these performances might well persuade devoted fans and intrigued improv enthusiasts alike of his view that these were landmark moments.
John Fordham, The Guardian

If ‘A Multitude of Angels’ represents the last, 20 years later, of Jarrett's epic improvisational forays to be released, it's as strong a swan song of that period in his life as any. More, truthfully, because in its revelatory nature, surprising energy and persistent invention, this collection of four outstanding concerts that few could manage in good health, let alone Jarrett's declining physical condition—where the pianist writes that he ‘was busy playing as though it was the last time’—stands amongst the very best of the pianist's long-form solo piano releases. It's a set whose importance cannot be underestimated and should not be undervalued.
John Kelman, All About Jazz

Never again would Jarrett deliver his much-admired spontaneous compositions in one uninterrupted flow, so these four, pristinely self-recorded performances from Modena, Ferrara, Torino and Genvoa, represent a kind of apogee, the completion of an arc that had begun in the early 1970s.
Cormac Larkin, Irish Times