Celebrating 50 years of Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek’s album Belonging

On Thursday, 15 August, as part of the Oslo Jazz Festival, a quartet led by Hanna Paulsberg celebrated the 50th anniversary of the classic album Belonging, with Keith Jarrett on piano, Jan Garbarek on tenor and soprano saxophones, Palle Danielsson on bass and Jon Christensen on drums.

Originally recorded in Oslo on 24 and 25 April 1974, and produced by Manfred Eicher at the Arne Bendiksen Studio, it has for decades occupied a unique position in Scandinavian and international jazz. The reason is simple, as Jarrett’s biographer, jazz musician Ian Carr, makes clear, “Belonging ranks with the very greatest quartet recordings in jazz because everything about it is superlative: the compositions, the free-flowing interplay, the level of inspiration and the brilliantly focussed improvising by all four musicians.”

It was recorded at a time when Eicher had been giving a lot of thought to bringing Jarrett and Garbarek together in the recordings studio.

“In the case of Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek the affinity towards each other was there,” recalled Eicher. “Still, the other people had to fit in the band, it was Jon Christensen and Palle Danielson, and so we tried and in this case we did two studio recordings and a wonderful first live recording in the Village Vanguard.”

Jarrett and Garbarek had first met when Jarrett was a member of the Charles Lloyd Quartet that played in Oslo in 1966. Lloyd played there each year until 1969 and both Jarrett and Garbarek had plenty of opportunity to hear each other play during that period. When Eicher put his proposition to Jarrett, the pianist offered to write a piece for strings to feature Garbarek, which was subsequently called Luminescence. In 1973, Garbarek went over to America and stayed with Jarrett for some days. He was introduced to the music of Luminescence, and Jarrett played through a number of compositions he had written for a possible quartet recording.

“I went over to his house in New Jersey, we had a look at both things and I was amazed,” said Garbarek. “There was great stuff, so eventually we had a chance to do it – we did the quartet recording with the new pieces and afterwards the recording with strings – that was a wonderful experience.”

Garbarek had earlier joined a quartet with pianist Bobo Stenson for a festival in Poland, which had worked well. Later in the year, in November 1973, Stenson had a date with ECM and it was agreed that he did it as a quartet – Stenson, Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen – which resulted in Witchi-Tai-To. When dates were set-up to record Jarrett’s material in April 1974, Eicher suggested Garbarek and Jarrett use the Witchi-Tai-To quartet with Jarrett in Stenson’s stead.

“We had this quartet with Bobo that started before we did the sessions with Keith,” continued Garbarek, “So we had this quartet there, that was a sort of the nucleus, the music Keith had done for a quartet turned into Belonging. Bobo was a huge fan of Keith, there was never any question of awkwardness with him.”

The album was recorded using Eicher’s 'open space acoustics' style of production, which takes your ear straight into the heart of the music, as if you were sitting in the recording studio in front of the players. To the group’s surprise, Jarrett insisted on first takes only with hardly any preparation or rehearsal.

“It was done so quickly,” said Garbarek, “quicker than any album I had ever done, the red light went on and we played! We got it done in under two hours I am sure, it really kept us on our toes, it was so concentrated, focused, and it turned out really nice. Then we did some TV recordings in Norway and Germany and a few concerts as well [with the quartet]. And later on it grew to become more touring, we did quite a few concerts in those years, from 1973 until 1979.”

But surprising as it may seem today, Belonging initially had its critics, as Garbarek recalled: “It’s funny because at the time there was a lot of criticism, all the jazz people would have liked to have seen Keith with his American group [with Dewey Redman on tenor sax, Charlie Haden on bass, and Paul Motian on drums]. We were thought substandard compared to that.

"But in the long term there was something about the group, and especially about the material that Keith thought fitting for that group that he wrote for it, that has stood the test of time. I hear a lot of comments now, ‘I really like the stuff you did with Keith in the 1970s.’ That’s great, it’s been a long time coming, but it’s a very frequent comment I encounter. And as I said, the material Keith wrote was really fresh and new, and I think that had an impact on a lot of music to follow.”

With the passage of time, Belonging has been more influential, and had more impact, not just on Scandinavian and European jazz, but on American jazz than Garbarek modestly implies. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if so, the title track of Steely Dan’s Grammy winning Gaucho, based on the gospel-ised ‘Long As You Know You’re Living Yours’ (the third track on Belonging), is all the proof you need. It led to Jarrett filing a lawsuit for copyright infringement.

As a result, he was credited as a co-writer, and was subsequently awarded royalties. But the album’s most tangible influence has been on the playing of others – most obviously Esbjörn Svensson and Tord Gustavsen in Sweden and Norway who came under the album’s spell, less obviously Nils Petter Molvaer and Andy Sheppard. But more subtly in the playing of a whole host of European jazz musicians down the years who have listened and learned from the clarity of the ensemble’s approach; Jarrett’s uncluttered writing; the spaciousness of their ballad playing; the juxtaposition of the written and the improvised, and freedom with coherence.

“It was based on a high risk, and whether it would work or not, we had to take the risk, I do not regret that I did take the risk to make the attempt to bring these musicians together,” said Manfred Eicher. “I think this band was incredibly influential as far as a lot of musicians were in America.”

After putting the finishing touches to Belonging in Oslo with what would become known as Jarrett’s European Quartet, Eicher, Jarrett and Garbarek headed for Ludwigsburg in Germany, where they met up with conductor Mladen 'Bobby”'Gutesha and the string players of the Südfunk Symphony Orchestra to record Luminescence. Two classics in one week, that’s quite something.

Based on interviews with Manfred Eicher (1999) and Jan Garbarek (2007) and (2012) by Stuart Nicholson

This article originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Jazzwise. Whether you want to enjoy Jazzwise online, explore our Reviews Database or our huge archive of issues, or simply receive the magazine through your door every month, we've got the perfect subscription for you. Find out more at magsubscriptions.com