Piano jazz-Can the tap water be drinked in Cologne?

Keith Jarrett is a miracle flower that will be 80 this year. In 2007 he told the “Spiegel” that after various crises he finally stopped hate having the piano. But why does a world -famous pianist hate his instrument? “Because it can’t sing,” he said, “now I have resigned myself to it, yes, I even feel very comfortable with it.” Because the piano “has no voice”, he would always groan, bumble and trample with his feet.

In the 1970s, Jarrett revolutionized the solo jazz concert at the piano with his improvisations by combining it “with a sixties ideas of spontaneity and freedom”, as the “New York Times” wrote. For the “Spiegel” it was “triumphals solo”, which Siegfried Schmidt-Joos described in 1974: “Jarrett’s consistently melodious sound images, harmoniously up to the border of serial music, follow the rhythm of breathing. They are the monologue of an introverted person who keeps open to the listener for a dialogue. “

In Ido Fluks feature film “Cologne 75”, this sensitive spirit meets an extroverted young woman who gets a lot on his nerves: Vera Brandes-who also organizes the concert, whose recording the best-selling solo jazz album ever was: The double album “The Cologne Concert” has sold 3.4 million times to date. It almost didn’t take place. This film almost lives from this and from the two speeds of his two protagonists: from the slow Jarrett (John Magaro) and the never slow Brandes (Mala Emde), who is traveling in the “Lola Renn” Tempo.

It is a double success story. In 1975 Jarrett toured by Europe – Im Renault 4, a small car, which was then popular with beginners, freaks and other fabulants, similar to the “beetle” and the “duck”. He has no money, no record contract and he stopped playing in Miles Davis’ band when the keyboardist he became known. But he has hope that his virtuoso impro style will be better received in Europe than in the United States. Brandes, on the other hand, has to get out of her bourgeois parents, where her dentist (Ulrich Tukur) is dictatorial. She is 18 and tells everyone that she is 25. It does not organize herself in a political group, but organizes concerts in Cologne. No rock music, but jazz. Later she becomes a well -known concert day and label operator.

1974 is the year in which Punk begins in the USA and disco prevails. But for Brandes and their friends, the West Berlin jazz days are the big thing. And Keith Jarrett is something very special. Because it sits on the wing and reinvents every concert. Jarrett believes that only music can “wake you up.” But Wiglaf Droste described the opposite in his famous text about the “Cologne Concert”. For him it was the soundtrack to dawn in the youth room of the middle 70s: “When this plate was running – and it almost always ran – no matter what, so you got the answer chronically: ‘Oh no … I am not so good today’, it sounded like Waidwund or Death Matt around,” I don’t even know who I am. “

The recording of this concert on plate, as well as the concert itself, had to be enforced against all adversities on site. Director Ido Fluk made »Cologne 75« like a Truffaut film. It is about the struggle for the great feelings that are not claimed, but are shown. For this purpose, Fluk divided the film into three sections. In the first, Brandes is described as a figure, in the second Jarrett and the third is about preparing the Cologne concert.

Brandes’ story is that of a bright young woman and her best friend between early feminism and left counter culture in the robe of time. Ton stone shards are quoted and can be played. Once Brandes and her girlfriend are casually around in the school building when a new student comes over and she asks: “What are you so fun?” – “We organize resistance to oppressive systems.” “Do you have permanent friends?” – We don’t believe in permanent friends. ”

Brandes begins with organizing jazz concerts as a mixture of hobby and test of courage. After a concert in Cologne, the London tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott asks her more for fun whether she could get him a few gigs – and she just does it. In the bathtub, she practices the professional appearance on the phone. It has to sound as if they call the German clubs directly from London. That works quite well too. The biggest test of courage is then the concert by Keith Jarrett in the Cologne Opera. For the rent, she has to borrow and promise DM 10,000 from her mother if she cannot repay it to become a dentist – a horror idea.

For the concert, Jarrett travels from Lausanne, in the R4, controlled by the ECM label operator Manfred Eicher (Alexander Scheer), who is manager, roadie and driver in one person for him. They return the plane tickets that Brandes sent them at the airport because they urgently need money. You take a American jazz journalist named Michael (Michael Cernus) who does not know how he could otherwise come to Cologne, as he wants to write the great Jarrett article. He already appears in the film, breaks the fourth wall and explains a few jazz -historical peculiarities to the spectators, especially the development from the big band to solo artist Jarrett.

He shouldn’t talk and ask that much in the car. Jarrett and Eicher are extremely misplair. Jarrett suffers from severe back pain, which is fueled by his ecstatic game, at some point the journalist sits at the wheel and drives them through the night on lonely mountainous streets while the moon shines friendly. These are beautiful, calm moments in the second part of the film, which illustrate en passant what Jarrett is for a type: a “difficult in internally knitted man”, as Droste wrote. In the morning they stand on a meadow next to the street, Jarrett does meditative breathing exercises and in the background you can hear cow bells.

In the third part, the film picks up speed again. Because arrived in Cologne, there is a big problem in the opera: the wrong wing is on stage! Not the large Bösendorfer 290 Imperial requested by Jarrett, but only a small bush -making wing and it is also upset and a pedal is broken. Jarrett and Eicher cancel the concert for the evening. Now Brandes and her friends have to start a race against the clock to organize the right wing and when it doesn’t work, at least a rapid repair of the wrong. Playing the same on a car accident, fears Jarrett and finally hears from Brandes that he is probably only afraid! And then the visibly intended Jarrett, who did not sleep for two days, go to the sink in his hotel room and asks if you could drink the tap water in Cologne? When Brandes affirmed the affirmative, he agreed to play.

The concert is sold out. Jarrett actually appears. The highlight on which the entire film is working does not play the role. Which is also due to the fact that the original nature of his music has not released its music for the film. Instead, “to love somebody” by Nina Simone sounds a very personable idea. All tension dissolves in a pleasure. When Jarrett sits again with Eicher in the R4 and looking for the vastness, he asks the ECM man how it was? “Tonight? It was good, ”he just says.

“Cologne 75”, Director and Book: Ido Fluk. With Mala Emde, John Magaro, Michael Chernus, Alexander Scheer, Ulrich Tukur. Germany, Poland, Belgium 2025, 116 min, theatrical release today