The Köln Concert

How Keith Jarrett made the obstacle in his path become the path.

One of the most frequently quoted passages from the book Meditations (Marcus Aurelius) is 5.20:

“For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its action into a means of achieving it. That which is an impediment to action is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way.”

The idea here is that when things go wrong — and things always go wrong — that we can reframe what has happened and find the value in it. Maybe that’s a new path, or maybe it’s a lesson learned for the future.

One of my favorite stories is that of Keith Jarrett and the Köln Concert of January 24, 1975. There are numerous retellings of this tale with varying levels of detail, but the gist of it is that a sold-out concert at the Cologne Opera House almost didn’t happen. There were many things that went wrong, with the almost final straw a broken and “unplayable” piano.

Jarret had requested a Bösendorfer Concert Grand 290. The upper and lower octaves were broken, the pedals didn’t work, and the middle register black keys weren’t functional. But because it was late, too late to refund tickets, Jarrett agreed to go on and do what he could.

What resulted was one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time. Jarrett took the impediments of…