Any new recording of Keith Jarrett's utterly unique solo playing is worthy of close attention, but the fact that the revered pianist was succumbing to an illness that would see him retire from public performance for several years when he recorded these four Italian concerts in October 1996 invests A Multitude of Angels with particular significance.
Never again would Jarrett deliver his much-admired spontaneous compositions in one uninterrupted flow, so these four, pristinely self-recorded performances from Modena, Ferrara, Torino and Genvoa, represent a kind of apogee, the completion of an arc that had begun in the early 1970s.
In a rare personal liner note, Jarrett himself describes these four concerts as a ‘pinnacle’ of his Himalayan career. It’s hard to disagree.
