When Keith Jarrett arrived in Cologne on January 24, 1975, he did not know that he was about to record a record that would go down in history. For now, the American pianist is just very tired, after having traveled from Lausanne aboard the small Volkswagen of his producer, Manfred Eicher. And above all, he has just taken a serious blow to his morale by discovering the piano on which he is supposed to place his fingers: a quarter of a grand instead of the Bösendorfer Imperial that he had been promised. Obviously it’s immediately less classy, especially since the keyboard is just as worn out as it is: a pedal is faulty, keys sound to absent subscribers, the tone looks a little too flashy… The pianist will even go to say a posteriori that the piano had the false air of a harpsichord “with electrically modified sound”. On this Friday evening, the atmosphere is clearly not good, as it is raining on Offenbach Square where the Cologne Opera stands. Yet it is there that in a few hours Keith Jarrett will write an essential chapter in his discography, by improvising a landmark recital. In the meantime, nothing has been played yet because given the conditions, the pianist, already crowned with real notoriety and known for his demands – the former sideman of the Miles Davis electric imposes strict silence in the audience – does not hear go up on the platform, where he is supposed to sit on the stool following Luluthe unfinished score by Alban B
