Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson, Jon Christensen

Nude Ants is the live double album of Keith Jarrett's European quartet with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen, recorded at the Village Vanguard in New York in May 1979. Released by ECM in March 1980, it was the only live record of the group issued at the time, and it captures the band in long, open performances of six Jarrett compositions, all of them heard on two discs.

The quartet had first recorded for ECM on Belonging in 1974, followed by My Song. In April 1979 it toured Japan, and a Tokyo concert from that trip later appeared as Personal Mountains, with a second one released in 2012 as Sleeper. The Vanguard run came the following month. Jarrett plays piano and adds timbales and percussion, Garbarek plays soprano and tenor saxophones, Danielsson double bass and Christensen drums and percussion. Tom McKenney recorded the sets, Martin Wieland mixed them, and Manfred Eicher produced.

The first disc opens with Chant of the Soil, which starts quietly over the rhythm section and lasts seventeen minutes. In Innocence the room is audible, glasses and voices included, before Garbarek takes the theme after Jarrett's introduction. Processional, at over twenty minutes, moves from a ballad-like opening into a long pedal point with Jarrett singing over it. The second disc is dominated by Oasis, half an hour long, in which Garbarek's soprano takes on the reedy sound of a shawm and reaches some of his highest, most ecstatic notes on record. New Dance, whose title the album's name echoes, is the most upbeat piece. Sunshine Song starts at a lazy drawl and builds to a surge, with Christensen driving the close.

In Musician in 1980, David Breskin wrote that Jarrett "writes the tunes and sets the tone for the quartet", and asked what had got into "the suddenly shrike-like Garbarek". At ECM Reviews, Tyran Grillo singled out the partnership of Danielsson and Christensen and called the album "an indispensable classic". Jarrett's biographer Ian Carr, quoted by ECM, wrote that the quartet "ceased to exist when it was at the height of its creativity".

This is the 2CD edition on ECM Records, catalogue number ECM 1171/72, of an album first released in March 1980. The first disc holds Chant of the Soil, Innocence and Processional, the second Oasis, New Dance and Sunshine Song.