You don’t have to know anything about jazz to grasp the importance of Keith Jarrett’s legendary musical talent. The enormously gifted free-improvisational jazz pianist, and what would become one of his most famous concerts, is the catalyst for “Köln 75,” playing at the M.V. Film Center starting on Nov. 7.
At its heart, though, “Köln 75” is not about the artist himself, played by John Magaro. Instead, it is a coming-of-age tale about the teenager, Vera Brandes (Mala Emde), who improvised her way into staging Jarrett’s famous, sold-out Köln opera house concert in 1975.
The film, written and directed by Ido Fluk, is inspired by a true story, as told by Brandes. We initially meet her, not as a youth, but at her 50th birthday party, where we see, just for the first of many times, her father ruthlessly tearing her down. “She is, without a doubt, my greatest disappointment,” he says to the crowd, who are toasting her, and are stunned into silence.
In a flash, the film jumps to an interview with Michael Watts (Michael Chernus), a critic-at-large for Jazzworld magazine, who speaks directly to us, as he does several times throughout the narrative. He explains that in music, “A false start is when a recorded track is stopped midway when someone messes up, or things just don’t feel right. You can tell a lot about a musician by the way they stop the recording.”
Thus, the film restarts, now with Vera, age 16, in a jazz club in Germany, listening to an English jazz pianist with her best friend. After his set, Brandes, with lots of flirty chutzpah we will come to admire, engages with him the rest of the evening. At the end of the night, he challenges Brandes to book him for appearances throughout Germany, promising a cut of the door.
Through amusingly ingenious and gutsy ways, Brandes becomes a successful, thriving musical promoter, referred to in the paper as “jazz bunny.” While she may be the sophisticate outside, at home, where family strife reigns, Brandes is simply a high school student, frustrated by her parents’ intense pressure to live a very conventional life.
Eventually, Brandes hears Jarrett perform, and recognizing his immense and unique talent, sets her sights on producing a concert at the opera house in Köln, the staid home of conservative classical music. She has a lot riding on the venture. Brandes has to fill the 1,300-seat theater, for which she must pay 10,000 DM in advance—about $6,000 today.
With nowhere else to turn, she asks her father for the money. In a searing scene, recalling what we saw at the film’s start, Brandes’ father calls her a whore, continuing, “You can put up your little shows and pretend you’re a jazz bunny. But I can tell you how your story ends. You’re going to fail. You’re going to fail and lose everything … You won’t get a single dime.”
With tenacious energy, the rest of the film centers on the mad dash to make the concert a reality. The obstacles grow at every turn, but Brandes’ infectious determination makes us root for her.
Watts re-enters the narrative as a journalist, trying to write an article on Jarrett, giving us screen time with the great musician himself, who comes with a basket full of his own troubles, making the likelihood of the concert coming to fruition an even more remote possibility. Watts also, in another of his asides to us, explains the history of jazz — from Big Band to jazz standards to free improvisation — helping us understand why Jarrett is so remarkable. Jarrett has no preconceived notion of what he is going to play, and he is totally alone onstage, riffing off no one or anything he’s ever heard. The music must be completely brand-new and never repeat itself. “It is undefined by anything but the player, the moment, and, of course, the piano,” Watts says. Watching Jarrett play, we sense the very private space to which he goes, where he is intensely present for every note, and everything else in the world washes away.
The flying pace of Vera’s backstory keeps us in suspense, even though we know from the beginning that Jarrett’s historic concert will come off. Taped live at the time, it became the best-selling solo jazz album in history.
In a Jan. 24 article in Variety magazine, the real Vera Brandes is quoted as saying, “Looking back at that day, I was amazingly relieved that it eventually happened, because for hours and hours, it didn’t look like it would. But when I heard the first notes, I knew it would be a great concert.”
“Köln 75” screens at the M.V. Film Center starting Friday, Nov. 7. For tickets and information, visit mvfilmsociety.com.
