Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American pianist and composer. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey and later moved on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s, he has also been a group leader and solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, including Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music. In 2008, he was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in the magazine’s 73rd Annual Readers’ Poll. In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize and was the first recipient to be recognized with the prizes for both contemporary and classical music. In 2004, he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize.

Jarrett was born on May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to a mother of Slovenian descent. Jarrett’s father was of mostly German descent. He grew up in suburban Allentown with significant early exposure to music. Jarrett possesses absolute pitch and displayed prodigious musical talents as a young child. He began piano lessons before his third birthday. At age five, he appeared on a television talent program hosted by swing bandleader Paul Whiteman. He performed in his first formal piano recital at the age of seven, playing works by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Saint-Saëns, and ending with two of his own compositions. Encouraged by his mother, he took classical piano lessons with a series of teachers, including Eleanor Sokoloff of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Jarrett attended Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where he learned jazz and became proficient in it. He developed a strong interest in contemporary jazz, and was inspired by a Dave Brubeck performance he attended in New Hope. He was invited to study classical composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, but he was already leaning toward jazz and turned it down. After his graduation from Emmaus High School in 1963, Jarrett moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music and play cocktail piano in local Boston clubs. In 1964, Jarrett moved to New York City, where he played at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Art Blakey hired Jarrett to play with The Jazz Messengers. Jarrett’s appearance on the Messengers’ live album Buttercorn Lady marked his commercial recording debut. However, there was friction between Blakey and Jarrett, and Jarrett left after four months of touring. During a show, he was noticed by Jack DeJohnette, who recommended Jarrett to his band leader Charles Lloyd. The Charles Lloyd Quartet had formed not long before and was exploring open, improvised forms while building supple grooves, and it was moving into terrain that was also being explored, although from another stylistic background, by some of the psychedelic rock bands of the West Coast. Their 1966 album Forest Flower was one of the most successful jazz recordings of the mid-1960s.

They were invited to play The Fillmore in San Francisco, and won over the local hippie audience. The quartet toured across the U.S. and Europe, including appearances in Leningrad and Moscow. Their concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall was attended by The Beatles. The band was profiled in Time and Harper’s Magazine, which made Jarrett a popular musician in rock and jazz. The tour also laid the foundation for a lasting musical bond with DeJohnette. Jarrett began to record his own tracks as a leader of small groups, at first in a trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Life Between the Exit Signs (1967), his first album as a band leader, was released by Vortex and was followed by Restoration Ruin (1968] Not only does Jarrett barely touch the piano, but he plays all the other instruments on what is essentially a folk-rock album; he also sings. Somewhere Before, another trio album with Haden and Motian, was released in 1968 on Atlantic Records..The Charles Lloyd Quartet with Jarrett, Ron McClure, and DeJohnette came to an end in 1968 after their recording of Soundtrack because of money disputes and artistic differences. Jarrett was asked to join the Miles Davis group after the trumpeter heard him in a New York City club. During his tenure with Davis, Jarrett played both electronic organ and Rhodes piano, alternating with Chick Corea. After Corea left in 1970, Jarrett often played electric piano and organ simultaneously. Despite his growing dislike of amplified music and electric instruments within jazz, Jarrett continued with the group out of respect for Davis and because of his desire to work with DeJohnette. DeJohnette left Davis’s band in the middle of 1971, and Jarrett followed in December. In 1971, Jarrett, Haden, and Motian participated in a four-day session for Atlantic Records during which they recorded three trio albums. The trio was augmented by saxophonist Dewey Redman. Redman became an official member of the group, which later became known as the “American quartet”. They would go on to record over a dozen albums over five years. The group was often supplemented by an extra percussionist, such as Danny Johnson, Guilherme Franco, or Airto Moreira, and occasionally by guitarist Sam Brown. Later in 1971, the quartet, with Brown and Moreira, recorded Expectations for Columbia Records, with string and brass arrangements by Jarrett. However, Columbia suddenly dropped Jarrett in favour of Herbie Hancock, and Jarrett’s manager negotiated a contract with Impulse! Records, for whom the group would record eight albums. Jarrett’s compositions and the musical identities of the group members gave this ensemble a distinctive sound. The quartet’s music is an amalgam of free jazz, straight-ahead post-bop, gospel music, and exotic, Middle-Eastern-sounding improvisations.

Since the early 1970s, Jarrett’s success as a jazz musician has enabled him to maintain a parallel career as a classical composer and pianist, recording almost exclusively for ECM Records. In the Light, an album made in 1973, consists of short pieces for solo piano, strings, and various chamber ensembles, including a string quartet and a brass quintet, and a piece for cellos and trombones, these compositions are dismissed by many classical music aficionados as lightweight. Bridge of Light (1993) is the last recording of classical compositions to appear under Jarrett’s name. Jarrett has also recorded classical works for ECM by composers such as Bach, Handel, Shostakovich, and Arvo Pärt.

Jarrett frequently emits loud vocalizations, sometimes characterized as moaning, during his playing. Jarrett is also physically active while playing jazz and improvised solo performances, but the vocalizations are generally absent whenever he plays classical repertoire. Jarrett is highly intolerant of audience noise, especially during solo improvised performances. He feels extraneous noise affects his inspiration and distracts from the purity of the sound. He has also complained onstage about audience members taking photographs, and has performed in the dark to prevent this. Jarrett is opposed to electronic instruments and equipment. He has largely eschewed electric or electronic instruments since his time with Miles Davis. On the majority of his recordings in the last 20 years, he has played acoustic piano only.