How could it happen that A teenager initiates one of the most successful concert images? This true story is told in the turbulent tragicomedy Cologne 75, which has been running in German cinemas since March 13. The story of Vera Brandes, which attracted the music genius Keith Jarrett in 1975 to the Cologne Opera, sounds almost too good to be true.
This article explains:
The true history of Cologne 75: Keith Jarrett and Vera Brandes
The real Vera Brandes (played in the film by Mala Emde) was Germany’s most recent concert promoter when she saw the pianist Keith Jarrett (John Magaro from September 5) during a performance. The special thing about his art: he went on stage without sheet music or plan and improvised his concerts on the grand piano, so that every appearance was unique. The teenager wanted to bring this experience to Cologne and chose the Cologne opera of all people, in which no concert of this kind had taken place.
An important figure was invented for the film
Brandes faced the task that 1,400 tickets for the price of 4 DM each For sale, as Jazzzbie revealed. The history of the concert is told in two tracks in the film. On the one hand, Veras attempts are described to put the concert on its feet and to apply.
On the other hand, we get to know the music critic Michael Watts (Michael Chernus), who accompanies the gifted musician and his manager Manfred Eicher (Alexander Scheer) to Cologne on a road trip to get his interview. The journalist figure is inventedbut Jarrett and his manager actually mastered the tour by car how Eicher explained to the 50th anniversary of the concert:
We drove to various concerts with a small R4 Renault, which I had at the time.
As in the film, she took her trip from Zurich to Cologne, only without intrusive journalists in the back seat. The flight ticket that the promoter Jarrett had provided were paid out. Here too the description of the film corresponds to the real background.
Also interesting:
There was really the wrong piano on stage
The central stumbling block is the piano in the film. When Jarrett appears to the sound check on the day of the concert, he notes that there is a tuned sample piano on stage and not what he wanted Bösendorfer 290 Imperial. Vera Brandes told the history of WDR3 in 2015:
Jarrett played a few tones on the instrument and then went around three times. Then Eicher did the same, and after a very long time he said that Jarrett on this wing will certainly not play a concert. And if I would not conjure up a playable instrument on the stage, I would have to cancel the concert.
“If you don’t randomly have 45,000 marks in a savings account, then leave it better”
In the film, Vera, her brother and her friends make calls through the phone book to get replacement. In fact, they come across an imperial, but they are advised against transport because he could damage the piano. This essentially corresponds to the description of Brandes:
Then I organized a few people and wanted to bring this wing to the opera. And At that moment the stimmer came and said something that I will never forget: ‘If you don’t randomly have 45,000 marks in a savings account, then leave it better. If you now roll a Bösendorfer over the Neumarkt at these temperatures in the rain, it can never be played again. ‘
Similar to the film, Keith Jarrett questioned the whole concert, as he told Jazzzwise:
It was the wrong piano, we had bad food in a hot restaurant and I hadn’t slept for two days.
Brandes was still able to persuade Jarrettwith a persuasiveness that you interview as “Not youth free” designated.
The “Cologne Concert” was a triumph
On January 24, 1975, Keith Jarrett sat down on the (wrong) piano in the Cologne Opera in front of a sold -out house. The concert was then sold as a album entitled “The Cologne Concert”. The recording is still considered the The best-selling jazz plate of a solo artist and the best-selling album of a piano soloist.
The film is told with some meta elements, for example to bring the meaning of Keith Jarrett closer to the audience within jazz history. Apart from a few smaller dramatizations, the events have largely taken place as it is shown in Cologne 75.