The Creativity Grind.

Have you ever listened to Keith Jarrett? There is a famous story about a concert he gave in Koln, Germany in the 70s. To cut a long story short he was supposed to perform at a Jazz festival there, the promoter had failed to get the type of piano he had requested, they had gotten a Bosendorfer, which has a much different tone than almost any other piano. It also was hopelessly out of tune and certain parts needed desperate repair. When Keith Jarrett saw not only the piano was out of tune but unplayable, he canceled the concert. The promoter pleaded with him to reconsider, getting it tuned and repaired as much as possible, making it barely playable. Keith refused to go on, fearing that playing this obviously unfit piano would be a catastrophe, especially since they had planned on recording the concert for a live album. He did not want to have a recording made for posterity of him playing a broken instrument. However the concert promoter persisted, and the arena was packed, and so Keith relented. The keys weren’t working very well, you had to really push on them to be heard, and one of the pedals wasn’t working, but it was in tune. The repairman had told them though that the more you play it, the odds are that it will become out of tune again.

Keith’s manager, simply because they had brought the recording equipment anyway, decided they would record the concert, even though they would probably never release…