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Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden "Jasmine" (ECM)

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Music can be hypnotic when it is sufficiently unlike normal human behavior and discourse as to make you uncomfortable and engage your judgment.

That is to say music that isn't obviously lyrical or evocative or romantic, or any particular mood; music that proceeds down one road long and single-mindedly enough to make you start asking questions. How long can these musicians go on like this? Whats the purpose? Is this penance or prayer? Is this how they are all day? And then you might come to realize they're doing this for you, not for themselves.

A little of that spirit gets into Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden's duo record, Jasmine. Not a lot; just enough so that you notice. Mr. Jarrett, the pianist, and Mr. Haden, the bassist, haven't worked together since Mr. Haden was in Mr. Jarrett's quartet in the 1970s, but they've each separately developed a relationship to the slow ballad. Mr. Jarrett made a thorough, purposeful solo ballad record in 1999 called The Melody at Night, With You, and Mr. Haden has gone this way more and more, especially live, in duets, doling out each note as a meaningful gesture. They've also both become song-finders, collecting tunes recorded by singers around the middle of the last century that never quite became standards. (And in one case here, much later: One Day Ill Fly Away, recorded by Randy Crawford in 1980.)

So Jasmine stays doggedly in slow-ballad range, with some variation very slow on Don't Ever Leave Me, a few beats per minute faster on Im Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life and One Day Ill Fly Away. The mood remains careful and tense its like staring at someone who wont blink such that a glib solo has no place here. Some pretty extraordinary improvisations, songs in and of themselves, dot the record: Mr. Haden's on Where Can I Go Without You, Mr. Jarrett's on Body and Soul.

Only one track breaks out of the pack, tempo-wise: No Moon at All, once sung by Nat King Cole, Doris Day and others. Mr. Jarrett gives it stretches of contrapuntal two-handed piano improvising, more rhythmically even than what you hear in the slower pieces. But that relative evenness brings up the albums real strength: that Mr. Jarrett and Mr. Haden, who both have great feeling for time, don't ever land on the same part of the beat, or in the same way. Those discrepancies give the music great traction and intensity. It can sound like drowsy music from a distance, but not up close.

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