My review of Keith Jarrett's Arbour Zena, today at All About Jazz.

Given his overall focus on just two projects over the past three decades—with the exception of relatively rare diversions into the classical world or recordings like Jasmine (2010), an intimate duo date with bassist Charlie Haden—it's easy to forget that there was a time when pianist Keith Jarrett was not just one of the most innovative performers on the planet, but a writer constrained by no stylistic boundaries. These days, focusing as he does on performing solo and with his longstanding Standards Trio, it's only with the release of archival finds like Sleeper—Tokyo, April 16, 1979 (2012),with his Belonging Quartet of the mid-to-late '70s, that we're reminded his purview was once far broader.

Not that his current activities aren't broad in scope—Somewhere (2013), is one of his best Standards Trio records since 1988's Still Live—but in his 42-year relationship with ECM Records, it was during his first decade that the pianist more clearly adhered to the label's genre-busting modus operandi, devoting "itself to all kinds of music, as long as it was good."

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