Keith Jarrett’s accidental masterpiece

Shortly before midnight on the evening of Friday 24 January 1975, at Cologne Opera House on the banks of the Rhine, a wiry 29-year-old from Pennsylvania walked onto the stage in front of a crowd of 1,400 people and began to play the piano, alone. The 50th anniversary of what followed is being celebrated with a number of events and documentaries across the world this week. A recording of Keith Jarrett’s performance that night, released on 30 November 1975, went on to become the best-selling solo piano record of all time.

The record was produced by ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music), a prog jazz label that was at its peak in the mid-1970s, with The Köln Concert its crowning achievement. My father was already an ECM devotee by 1975 and would routinely come home from his working week on a Friday night with a new album of theirs, usually purchased at Mole Jazz in King’s Cross (a shop that survived long enough for me to become a regular in my early days in London in the late 1980s).