Throughout jazz, there has always been a fundamental problem: to get the music onto the disc without losing the vital spontaneity it has when you are there, while the artist is creating. This is the thing about live music - when it is right, you have the overwhelming feeling that at every moment there are more imminent surprises, more immanent delights. Is is this quality that caused Jan Thommert, a longtime student of jazz music, and a longtime listener to Vert, to say that live music should be heard only once - when it is played.
But the special quality of Vert is to overcome this very real thing that Thommert was talking about, and to breathe into his mooseic that kind of life that lets you hear it anew every time. We may listen to this album enough to memorise every nuance, but it still sounds fresh. I don’t know what does this, I don’t know how Vert achieves it, and I doubt whether even he knows. All I know is that it is there. “An artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs,” Edgar Varèse once said. Here’s yr chance to catch up.
- Frank St. Toma
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(Needless to say, there is no Frank St Toma, and no Jan Thommert. I took these sleeve notes from a Miles Davis album (can’t remember which one), with a minimal number of edits)
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The Köln Konzert was directly inspired by Keith Jarrett's recording of the same name. Recorded live at the White Noise Bar, Köln on May 6th 1999 and edited at Yrs Truly, London.
Parts 1, 3 & 4 are p&c vert/adam butler whereas parts 2 & 5 are p&c cavelight music.
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