By Steve Feeney

The Old Country is a wonderful addition to the Keith Jarrett discography. There are no stale leftovers here — this album adds a whole new course to the pianist’s extraordinary banquet.

Pianist/bandleader Keith Jarrett (b.1945) has been around long enough to have impressed generations of music fans. In the late ’60s, his work with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis brought him name recognition with younger listeners who were curious about improvisatory jazz after rock artists seemed to have taken a turn down a country lane.

In Jarrett’s later ’70s band, Dewey Redman (sax), Charlie Haden (bass), Paul Motian (drums), and a variety of percussionists, complemented the acoustic piano work of the leader. Check out their Impulse albums of the period again if you haven’t for a while. It is exceptionally good stuff.

Following that period (there are overlaps, of course), Jarrett dabbled in extended soloing and classical music performance before focusing on recording a long series of trio discs, featuring Gary Peacock on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. They leaned heavily on gracefully invigorating a resurgent repertoire of classics and standards.

At the Deer Head Inn, recorded in 1992 and released in 1994, temporarily brought Paul Motian back to the drummer’s seat alongside the pianist after a 16-year separation. That disc epitomized much of what remains memorable of Jarrett’s middle-to-late period work. (Illness has limited the pianist’s musical output in recent years.)

Now, ECM has released a disc of not previously available material from the 1992 gig, recorded before an overflow crowd of about 200 in the small performance space in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. More is definitely not less: The Old Country is a wonderful addition to the Jarrett discography. There are no stale leftovers here  — this album adds a whole new course to Jarrett’s extraordinary banquet.

A program of standards (even, for some, chestnuts) are empowered by pristine sound and nuanced renditions. Steeped in melancholy, “I Fall in Love Too Easily” is marked by an initial solo run by Jarrett that powerfully wanders through fields of regret. Peacock and Motion arrive with the first iteration of the familiar refrain, solidifying the elegant poignancy of the Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn tune. A sped-up Peacock solo eases the angst (a little) before Jarrett returns, injecting the ache of reverie.

Larry Morey and Frank Churchill’s “Some Day My Prince Will Come” is a very well-known hymn to Disney optimism, here modified to suggest a sense of longing from a distance.  In his memoir, Every Good Boy Does Fine, pianist Jeremy Denk argues that the best melodies look to the future, even as they cling to the past. The threesome here gently walks that paradoxical tightrope, the push and pull of Motian’s brushes helping to pleasingly burnish a familiar tune.

“How Long Has This Been Going On?” takes the George Gershwin gem on an ambitious emotional journey, reflective passages interlaced with swinging variations. Jarrett’s voicings are slightly bluesy and exactingly poetic. Cole Porter’s “All of You” begins with a striking solo embellishment from the pianist before he breaks out into some swinging variations, assisted by a walking bassline from Peacock and the understated propulsion that’s so characteristic of Motian. We also get some of Jarrett’s signature (and, let’s face it, a little bit wacky) sing-along vocalizations. Porter recieves another nod in this set with a genial rendition of his romantic tune “Everything I Love.”

The title cut, by Nat Adderley and Curtis Lewis, is another of the disc’s insidious swingers, with Motian becoming a little more assertive, as he also is on the Thelonious Monk classic “Straight, No Chaser.” Victor Young, Ray Evans, and Jay Livingston’s “Golden Earrings” turns the dial all the way — supplying some welcome, hard-bop edge.

The Old Country was a rare reunion of Jarrett and Motian, a pairing embellished here by the rich bass work of Peacock. This new disc from the vault of ECM is a keeper.

Steve Feeney is a Maine native and attended schools in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. He has a Master of Arts degree in American and New England Studies from the University of Southern Maine. He began reviewing music on a freelance basis for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram in 1995. He was later asked to also review theater and dance. Recently, he has added BroadwayWorld.com as an outlet and is pleased to now contribute to Arts Fuse.