Standards Trio

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

The Standards Trio is the name of the trio of the pianist Keith Jarrett with the bass player Gary Peacock and the drummer Jack DeJohnette. It began in 1983. Manfred Eicher, the head of the label ECM, suggested to Jarrett that he record an album of jazz standards. Jarrett asked Peacock and DeJohnette for it, with whom he had worked in 1977 on Peacock's album Tales of Another. The result was called Standards, Vol. 1. Standards, Vol. 2 and Changes came from the same recording session and followed shortly after.

Music and breakthrough

The albums and the tour that followed were successful, at a time when traditional acoustic post-bop was on the rise again. The trio continued for years alongside Jarrett's solo concerts. Around 2000, when Jarrett began touring again after an illness, he played both solo and with the Standards Trio.

Influence

The music consists of well-known songs from the American song tradition, as they are used in jazz, in an acoustic line-up of piano, bass and drums. The trio plays the songs without much frill and lets them breathe. Jarrett, who had earlier played with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis, brought his art of improvisation to the repertoire of the standards in this trio. In this way the group joined the jazz tradition to the sound quality of the ECM recordings. Jarrett is known for his album The Köln Concert from 1975, but the Standards Trio showed another side of him: the interpreter of the songbook.

Listening