Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette

Tokyo '96 is a concert by the Standards Trio of Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, recorded at Orchard Hall in Tokyo on 30 March 1996. Released in April 1998 to mark fifteen years of the group, it was the trio's twelfth album for ECM. Across ten tracks and close to eighty minutes, the three make old songs new again. In Jarrett's words, "Every time we play, we might be playing the same material, but it's a new planet."

The project began in 1983 as a single studio session that produced three albums, Standards, Vol. 1, Standards, Vol. 2 and Changes. Before this disc, ECM had issued the six-CD At the Blue Note, which won the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik among other awards. Japan had been a loyal audience for Jarrett since the 1970s and Sun Bear Concerts. The Tokyo promoter Toshinari Koinuma recalled that this concert was the first jazz event in Japan attended by the Crown Prince and Crown Princess. The music was mixed in Tokyo at SEDIC.

The set opens with more than eleven minutes on It Could Happen to You, the longest track, and I'll Remember April also runs past ten minutes. At the other end, Mona Lisa is a ballad of barely three minutes. Bebop gets its due in Billie's Bounce by Charlie Parker and John's Abbey by Bud Powell. Two of the ballads turn into something else. Last Night When We Were Young leads into Jarrett's own Caribbean Sky, and My Funny Valentine closes the concert by flowing into his Song.

ECM gathered strong notices on release. The Los Angeles Times put it simply: "this is jazz at its best". The Observer heard "a triumph of sustained creativity". Jarrett himself told Jazziz he was proud of the consistency the trio had kept over the years. Reviewing it in All About Jazz in 1998, Christopher Hoard found the trio in perfect balance and praised DeJohnette's drumming, from orchestral expressiveness to the subtlest support. In AllMusic, Richard S. Ginell heard the musicians sharper and swinging harder than ever.

CD, ECM 1666, first released by ECM Records in 1998.