Wolfgang Sandner

This is the Spanish edition of the biography of Keith Jarrett by Wolfgang Sandner, translated by Richard Gross and published by Libros del Kultrum. First published in German by Rowohlt Berlin in 2015, it is a full-length account of the pianist by a critic who followed his work for decades and knew him personally. It covers a life and a working method that Jarrett has always guarded closely, from childhood to the late solo concerts.

Sandner was music editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for almost thirty years and teaches at the University of Marburg. He has also written portraits of Miles Davis, Heiner Goebbels and Arvo Pärt. He came to know Jarrett through Manfred Eicher, the founder of ECM, and visited him at his home in New Jersey. A review of the later English edition notes that the friendship cooled, and that Sandner writes about his subject from a certain distance.

The book follows Jarrett roughly in order. It starts with the child prodigy in Allentown, Pennsylvania, then moves through his apprenticeship with Art Blakey and his years with Charles Lloyd and Davis. The central chapters deal with the long partnership with Eicher and ECM, from the first solo recordings to The Köln Concert. Later chapters follow his groups, the trio and his way of improvising alone at the piano, up to the Budapest Concert of 2016. Sandner writes as a close listener, with detailed attention to the recordings rather than to private life.

The English translation, made by the pianist's brother Chris Jarrett and published by Equinox in 2020, was expanded with new family material, so it differs from the Spanish text. Its reviews still describe the book Sandner wrote. In Jazz Journal (2020) Simon Adams found it "especially insightful about Jarrett the freely improvising soloist". In London Jazz News (2020) John Bungey called it "sadly timely". That autumn Jarrett had revealed that two strokes in 2018 would probably keep him from performing again.

Softcover, 315 pages, 210 x 131 mm, in Spanish (ISBN 978-84-949383-8-2), published by Libros del Kultrum in 2019 and sold by ECM.