Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American jazz and classical music pianist and composer.

Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success as a group leader and a solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music.

In 2003 Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize, the first recipient of both the contemporary and classical musician prizes, and in 2004 he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. His album The Köln Concert (1975) became the best-selling piano recording in history.

In 2008 he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in the magazine’s 73rd Annual Readers’ Poll.

Jarrett has been unable to perform since suffering a stroke in February 2018, and a second stroke in May 2018, which left him partially paralyzed and unable to play with his left hand.

Keith Jarrett was born on May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States, to a mother of Slovenian descent. Jarrett’s grandmother was born in Segovci, near Apače in Slovenia, (at the time, this was in the Austria of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Her own parents probably descended from the Slavic population of Prekmurje, a few miles away in a Hungarian part of the Empire almost totally populated by Slovenes. Jarrett’s father was of mostly German descent.

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