KEITH JARRETT The Carnegie Hall Concert ECM *****

Years ago, after a young Keith Jarrett played a solo concert at Dublin's National Concert Hall, he succinctly summed up his approach as "other players go to the edge and look over. I go to the edge and jump." With this two-CD recording of last year's Carnegie Hall concert, Jarrett's first solo American performance in 10 years, the great pianist is still making the leap into the unknown. This time it's indicative of a continued shift in his approach to free solo improvising, already evident in Radiance, his solo Japanese recording from 2002.

It is, for one thing, less discursive. If anything, in the 10 free pieces that comprise the bulk of the Carnegie Hall performance, Jarrett is even more rigorous in their development than in previous examples of his solo free playing. When he feels he's done enough, he simply stops; there's no rambling and the improvisations tend to be briefer as a result. He also seems to be acutely aware of the need to maintain contrast, evoking everything from the classical to musical Americana, setting, for example, the songlike delicacy of Part VIII against the jagged intricacies of the stunning Part IX.

Overall, these 10 pieces, full of darkness, light and beauty, add up to an amazing performance of sustained, brilliant, many-faceted invention. Then, as if in relaxation after the intensity required to produce them, he returned for five encores, four of them - The Good America, Paint My Heart Red, My Song and True Blues - his own gorgeous compositions, and the fifth (Time on My Hands) a standard. They are all treated with a clear concern to bring out their innate beauty, bathed in a kind of calm reflection after the concentration that produced what preceded them. www.musicconnection.org.uk

Ray Comiskey