A music promoter in “Köln 75” insists that the American pianist Keith Jarrett’s performances shouldn’t be thought of as jazz. His improvisations are even freer: “He plays whatever comes to him,” she explains. This fleet-footed period piece, directed by Ido Fluk, concerns a moment in 1975 when Jarrett caught lightning in a bottle in Cologne, West Germany, at a concert that, luckily enough, was recorded. “The Köln Concert” remains one of the best-selling solo piano albums in history.
This crowd-pleaser doesn’t principally tell Jarrett’s story, though, but that of the promoter, Vera Brandes, who began booking musicians as a teenager and was not yet 20 at the time of Jarrett’s triumph. (She is played during the main action by a winning Mala Emde, and by Susanne Wolff in framing scenes set three decades later.) The first part of the movie concentrates on Brandes’s rise, as she books engagements out of the dental clinic run by her imperious father (Ulrich Tukur) and embraces the rebellious energy of the time.
Partway through, “Köln 75” introduces Jarrett (a terrifically weary John Magaro) as a major character. For an interlocutor, the movie pairs him with an American journalist (Michael Chernus) who frequently breaks the fourth wall to describe the difficulty of what Jarrett was doing: inventing music by himself in real time every night. In a cameo, the classical pianist Ana-Marija Markovina confirms that she couldn’t play that way.
Such breezy asides suggest a movie that’s a little too eager to be liked. But it’s also tough to resist, particularly as Brandes has to scramble as the clock ticks down to the concert and Jarrett’s preferred piano is not in place.
Köln 75
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters.
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