{"id":968,"date":"2025-05-14T08:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T08:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/koln-you-dig-it-149780\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T08:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T08:58:08","slug":"koln-you-dig-it-149780","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/koln-you-dig-it-149780\/","title":{"rendered":"K\u00f6ln you dig it?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Plenty of music biopics are unable to use songs by the artists they depict. Some, like the 2020 Bowie-related movie Stardust<\/strong>, struggle as a result; others, like Backbeat<\/strong> or Nowhere Boy<\/strong>, find ways to tell a more introspective tale. \u201cFor me, it was a beautiful obstacle to overcome,\u201d says Ido Fluk<\/strong>, the Israeli writer and director of K\u00f6ln 75<\/strong>, which dramatises the events surrounding Keith Jarrett<\/strong>\u2019s famous K\u00f6ln Concert<\/strong> without being able to feature a single note of his music. \u201cIt\u2019s about this legendary concert where a pianist has to improvise for an hour on a broken piano. As artists, the creative process is often about dealing with obstructions and obstacles. Telling this story without using any of the original music was our broken piano.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Plenty of music biopics are unable to use songs by the artists they depict. Some, like the 2020 Bowie-related movie Stardust<\/strong>, struggle as a result; others, like Backbeat<\/strong> or Nowhere Boy<\/strong>, find ways to tell a more introspective tale. \u201cFor me, it was a beautiful obstacle to overcome,\u201d says Ido Fluk<\/strong>, the Israeli writer and director of K\u00f6ln 75<\/strong>, which dramatises the events surrounding Keith Jarrett<\/strong>\u2019s famous K\u00f6ln Concert<\/strong> without being able to feature a single note of his music. \u201cIt\u2019s about this legendary concert where a pianist has to improvise for an hour on a broken piano. As artists, the creative process is often about dealing with obstructions and obstacles. Telling this story without using any of the original music was our broken piano.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Fifty years ago, the American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett turned up to play a solo gig at the Cologne Opera House<\/strong> and, instead of the 10ft-long, half-ton B\u00f6sendorfer concert grand that he was expecting, he was given a weedy, 6ft rehearsal piano with broken pedals. A furious Jarrett wanted to cancel but ended up reluctantly playing the gig, using the instrument\u2019s limitations to improvise in a completely different way. Against the odds, a live recording of the show ended up shifting more than four million copies, becoming the biggest-selling solo piano album in history and turning Jarrett into a star.<\/p>\n

K\u00f6ln 75<\/strong> explores the chaotic events leading up the concert, with John Magaro<\/strong> playing a spiky Keith Jarrett and Mala Emde<\/strong> playing Vera Brandes<\/strong>, the feisty teenage promoter who ultimately talked him into playing the show. Fluk says that his aim was to \u201cmove the focus away from Jarrett, the brooding artist, and instead look at the people who help to facilitate art. Vera Brandes was 16 when she started booking concerts. She\u2019s a legend in Germany, and her story is as important to the K\u00f6ln Concert as Jarrett\u2019s. When I decided to make the film, I tracked her down and found her living in Greece. She said she\u2019d been waiting 50 years for someone to tell her story!\u201d<\/p>\n

Switching between English and German dialogue, K\u00f6ln 75<\/strong> often breaks the fourth wall and uses an elliptical narrative approach that goes off on entertaining tangents. \u201cMany music biopics are very formulaic,\u201d argues Fluk. \u201cThe origin story, the tortured genius, the excesses of addiction, the triumphant comeback concert, etcetera. I wanted something more freewheeling. My spirit guide was Michael Winterbottom<\/strong>\u2019s 24 Hour Party People<\/strong>: fast, energetic and fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

The famously reclusive Keith Jarrett had no input into the film, but his brother Chris \u2013 also a renowned pianist \u2013 was a script advisor. \u201cWe wanted to make sure we got our portrayal of Keith right,\u201d says Fluk. Help also came from the film\u2019s producer Oren Moverman<\/strong>, who co-wrote two of the more impressively unorthodox music biopics of recent times, I\u2019m Not There<\/strong> and Love & Mercy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The K\u00f6ln Concert is the subject of another upcoming film called Lost In K\u00f6ln<\/strong>, a documentary that forensically interviews dozens of people involved in the show. Brandes was involved in both projects, and Fluk sees them as complementary. \u201cBut my film certainly isn\u2019t a documentary,\u201d he emphasise. \u201cI also didn\u2019t really want it to be a jazz film, just as The K\u00f6ln Concert isn\u2019t really a \u2018jazz\u2019 album \u2013 it\u2019s as much a piece of country-rock, blues and classical music. I wanted to make something similarly genre-free, something that wasn\u2019t gatekeepy, something accessible to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

K\u00f6ln 75 will be released in the UK later this year<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post K\u00f6ln you dig it?<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Plenty of music biopics are unable to use songs by the artists they depict. Some, like the 2020 Bowie-related movie Stardust, struggle as a result; others, like Backbeat or Nowhere…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,35,489],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-interviews","category-keith-jarrett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}