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One of the most significant pianists to emerge since the 1960s, Keith Jarrett maintained a career that went through several phases. He gained international fame for his solo concerts, which found him spontaneously improvising all of the music without any prior planning, but he also led a couple of dynamic quartets/quintets, performed classical music, and later played explorative versions of standards with his longtime trio. Although his tendency to "sing along" with his piano now and then is distracting, Jarrett continued to grow as a powerful improviser after decades of important accomplishments. Jarrett started on the piano when he was three, and by the time he was seven he had already played a recital. A child prodigy, Jarrett was a professional while still in grade school. In 1962, he studied at Berklee, and then started working in the Boston area with his trio. He moved to New York in 1965, and spent four months with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. As a member of the very popular C...