Artist: Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett is an American pianist and composer.

In 1963, Jarrett attended the Berklee College of Music and played cocktail piano in local Boston clubs. In 1964, Jarrett moved to New York City, where he played at the Village Vanguard in  Greenwich Village. Art Blakey hired Jarrett to play with The Jazz Messengers. Jarrett's appearance on the Messengers' live album Buttercorn Lady marked his commercial recording debut.

Jarrett left the band after four months of touring. During a show he was noticed by Jack DeJohnette, who recommended Jarrett to his band leader Charles Lloyd. The Charles Lloyd Quartet had formed not long before and were exploring open, improvised forms while building supple grooves, and they were moving into terrain that was also being explored, although from another stylistic background, by some of the psychedelic rock bands of the West Coast. The quartet toured across the U.S. and Europe.

Jarrett began to record his own tracks as a leader of small groups at first in a trio with Charlie Haden  and Paul Motian. Life Between the Exit Signs (1967), his first album as a band leader, was released by Vortex followed by Restoration Ruin (1968), which Thom Jurek of AllMusic wrote was "a curiosity in his catalog". 

The Charles Lloyd Quartet with Jarrett, Ron McClure, and DeJohnette, came to an end in 1968 after their recording of Soundtrack. Jarrett was asked to join the Miles Davis group after the trumpeter heard him in a New York City club. During his tenure with Davis, Jarrett played both electronic organ and Rhodes piano, alternating with Chick Corea. After Corea left in 1970, Jarrett often played electric piano and organ simultaneously. Despite his growing dislike of amplified music and electric instruments within jazz, Jarrett continued with the group out of respect for Davis and because of his desire to work with DeJohnette. Jarrett has often cited Davis as a vital musical and personal influence on his own thinking about music and improvisation. 

In 1973, Jarrett began playing totally improvised solo concerts, and it is the popularity of these concert recordings that made him one of the best-selling jazz artists in history. Albums released from these concerts were Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne (1973), which Time  magazine named "Jazz Album of the Year", The Köln Concert (1975), which became the best-selling piano recording in history, All About Jazz, and Sun Bear Concerts (1976), a 10-LP (and later 6-CD) box set. Another of Jarrett's solo concerts, Dark Intervals, was released in 1987. 

Jarrett has commented that his best performances have been when he has had only the slightest notion of what he was going to play at the next moment. He also said that most people don't know "what he does" which relates to what Miles Davis said to him expressing bewilderment as to how Jarrett could "play from nothing."