Keith Jarrett
The Melody At Night With You

April is a suitable month. Suitable for rediscovering, warming up, remembering. The years pass quickly, and when you’re over thirty, the world speeds up. Everything is rushing. And you above the world. It almost feels like you can feel the air through your hair from the speed. Between morning and evening, there’s a shorter, more fleeting, more monotonous interval. Well, of course, time is objective. At least it should be. A day has always lasted twenty-four hours. Yet, at my age, some days seem to last 6 or, when things go well, 7 hours. But it hasn’t always been that way. No.

There were days that lasted an eternity. Warm days, full of colors and scents. Days so long they seemed to last a lifetime. They were the days of first passions. Yes. Those days it seems that your truest self detaches from yourself and goes blissfully strolling in a suspended and unreal world. Those days when you have a heart as big as a watermelon. You are alive! You feel it, you know it, you see it. And then there’s her, she doesn’t want to leave you in peace, not for a second, without her thought. Because, while doing your Latin translation, you’re dazed for half an hour and, inside you, you’ve been gone your whole life. Because, while shaving, you look in the mirror and see someone laughing. How can it be? I’m not laughing! Yes, you know it. But you don’t admit it. “What the hell! I'm a man.” You’ll only understand that many years later. When time will fly fast. Like a gray freight train. But not now, now she's here to stop everything. An inflamed limbo. We were saying, April. Sometimes, with the warmth of these sunny days, the desire returns at least to remember those impulses, those passions. To stop time once again.

Fortunately, one of the greats of our days desires to play the piano for his wife, at home, alone. And records it. And we, poor thirty-year-olds who might happen to get our hands on this masterpiece, could return to dilate time. Magically, once more. “I Love You Porgy” and “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” by Duke Ellington sound soft, muted, discreet. You can hear, it transpires, it oozes what Keith wants to convey to his wife. A serenade, that's what it is. A serenade played in the bedroom. Private, intimate, evocative. And we, with these songs, fly again with our forgotten feelings. Keith plays Gershwin, “Someone To Watch Over Me”, interprets it, tames it like an old and experienced tamer with his lion. The notes follow each other solo and, unlike other works by Jarrett, here there is only him and the piano. A masterful, measured, soft interpretation. The notes are "full," but light as air, giving us the sensation of almost seeing Keith play hunched over, in the semi-darkness, for his woman. Time stands still. Old songs like “Be My Love”, traditional pieces like “My Wild Irish Rose” call to mind our “crushes”. Like April.

Everything is still. Silence, music, warmth, and a very sweet weight on the stomach. Nothing more.