The Köln Concert is a live recording of solo piano improvisations performed by Keith Jarrett at the Opera House in Cologne on 24th January 1975. The double-vinyl album was released in the autumn of 1975 by ECM Records and went on to become the best-selling solo album in jazz history, and the all-time best-selling piano album with sales of more than 3.5 million.

Jazz pianist Dorian Ford plays the Kishinami/Yamashita transcription, creating an unusual chance to hear a vivid interpretation from an improvisor’s perspective.

Here is a piano concert unlike any other. It’s a jazz piano concert but not improvised. It’s solo piano music but it has grooves, riffs, and song-form chord changes, like jazz or rock. It is steeped in the German classical piano tradition like a big sonata by Schubert or an emotionally programmatic journey through the soul like a Mahler symphony. But it could only come from the USA. Fearlessly eclectic, one might think of it like an Ives piano sonata and yet it obviously inhabits the jazz, folk, rock, blues landscape of American music, which is essentially improvised.

So can this spontaneity be achieved without improvising? Can an interpreter bring a transcription of improvised music to life? If so, what can they bring to the music that isn’t already there in the original recording?

Food or drink not included in the ticket price but available to order on the night before or after the concert. Doors open at 6pm.