Köln 75

Directed by Ido Fluk, this film tells the story of Vera Brandes, the eighteen year old who organized Keith Jarrett's 1975 Cologne concert. The real events went like this: the only slot the opera house would give her began at eleven thirty at night, and it was the first jazz concert in the building's history. Jarrett had asked for a Bösendorfer concert grand, but staff mistakenly set out a small rehearsal piano with tinny upper registers, weak bass and broken pedals. Jarrett had not slept properly for several nights, was wearing a back brace, had driven from Switzerland in an old Renault, and on seeing the piano nearly refused to play. Brandes talked him into it. He adapted his approach to the instrument's limits, using ostinatos to compensate for the weak bass and concentrating on the middle of the keyboard, and the resulting recording sold roughly four million copies to become the best selling solo jazz album ever made. The film's strangest feature is this: the real Jarrett declined to cooperate and refused permission to use his music, so the concert cannot be heard in the concert film, and the performance falls silent at its climax. Critics likened this to Jarrett's own situation fifty years earlier, forced to create inside an imposed constraint. Who it's for: Anyone drawn to jazz history and the chaos behind a legendary recording. Who it's not for: Not for viewers expecting to hear Jarrett's music, since rights were withheld and the film never plays it.