Recorded three years ago but kept secret until recently Jasmine is Keith Jarrett's first studio album in years and marks his reunion this time in duo form with Charlie Haden. Ostensibly an album of love songs, it stands up with the very best of Jarrett’s recordings, says Stuart Nicholson.

Jasmine, pianist Keith Jarrett’s latest release on the ECM label, is a duo album with bassist Charlie Haden. Released to coincide with Jarrett’s 65th birthday, it provides an answer to a question jazz fans have debated since 1959. On the face of it, the question is simple – what album do you play after Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue? The answer less so. Davis’ album, an understated masterpiece and perhaps the most complete, aesthetically rounded statement in the whole of contemporary jazz, consumes the space around it, blotting out the memory of albums played before it and diminishing the effect of those played after.

Yet Jasmine continues Kind of Blue’s mood of introspection and yearning without in any way seeking to imitate it. Here is music of great control, yet paradoxically great freedom as Jarrett and Haden together shape the destiny of the music on the spot, without any prior preparation. Although these two recordings are dissimilar, there is also a sense of continuum, one to the other, that sustains the creative moment. Clearly Jasmine is from a different time and a different place, yet there is no disjunction, as if someone has boorishly switched the radio to another station, when it follows Kind of Blue because whatever meanings may be extracted from this music, it is first and foremost a masterpiece.

This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #142 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a FREE copy of Denys Baptiste's 'Let Freedom Ring!'.