'The Carnegie Hall Concert' was Keith Jarrett’s first North American solo concert in a decade and perhaps one of the most wide-ranging of all his performances. The album almost amounts to an autobiographical portrait of the great improviser. Each of his two sets takes the form of a suite of songs, some intensely lyrical, others angular, turbulent, or probing. And the encores - no less than five of them - touch upon the blues and boogie-woogie, upon standard material (“Time On My Hands”), and even offer a new perspective on “My Song”, written for the Scandinavian ‘Belonging’ quartet and first recorded by Jarrett in 1977.

In the rare solo concerts Keith Jarrett has given following his return to the form in 1997, he has been readjusting his approach to solo improvisation. As he explained in an interview in DownBeat last year, he has granted himself the periodic freedom to stop ... and to grant each spontaneously-evolving musical idea no more than the space it requires.

The long arcs of segued episodes that characterized earlier solo performances - including those released on albums including The Köln Concert, Sun Bear Concerts, Vienna Concert, La Scala and many others - have been banished, replaced now by an emphasis on smaller forms: “If I start to play and a minute-and-a-half later I feel a piece is over, I’ll stop. It’s the freedom to stop when stopping seems correct. I had got myself locked into a slightly too complicated situation where the rules I had made for myself had been governing me - instead of making simple rules that could take me somewhere new.”

Radiance and the DVD Tokyo Solo, both recorded in 2002 documented the beginning of this process. On 'The Carnegie Hall Concert', recorded in September 2005 at America’s most prestigious venue, it is clear that Jarrett is enjoying his new liberties, as is his audience. The sold-out Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, included - in addition to numerous passionately committed fans - many musicians and critics. No one was disappointed and the electrifying atmosphere is evidenced by the ecstatic applause.

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