There is something about Keith Jarrett’s improvisational music that transports the listener to another dimension. Test it out. Click on KOLN 75. Start the video and come back to read this review while you travel to a magical place of tones and subtlety that charms your mind.
You are listening to the best-selling solo jazz album of all time and the best-selling solo piano album of any genre. Instead of an invasive biopic on the famously private Jarrett, Ido Fluk chose to make this film about the creation of the record. And to do that, he had to do some improvisation of his own.
The Bone
First, he introduces a fictional guy he calls Michael Watts (Michael Chernus) to give some bone to the story – like a Greek chorus used to portend and give asides to fill out a drama. Watts wants an interview with Jarrett (John Magaro). Because he’s a struggling writer, he ends up begging Jarrett for a ride to the fateful Koln (Colonge, Germany) Opera House on a cold Thursday night in January. While he doesn’t get any intimate or even mundane info from Jarrett, who’s admirably not about puffing out a life story or explaining his extraordinary talent, we get the setting for creative transcendence.
The next night, Friday, Jarrett is scheduled to play the concert at the Koln. But his back aches, he’s exhausted, and the piano on the stage doesn’t work.
However, it’s not the music journalist or Jarrett that energizes this insightful docudrama. The life of the film is Vera Brandes, played with exceptional force by Mala Emde, the rebel German booking agent whose tenacity was reinforced by, as she acknowledges, “knowing narcissistic men.”
The disconcerting beginning
The film begins with an elegant 50th birthday party for beautiful, blond-haired Vera, sensitively played by exquisitely beautiful Susanne Wolff. In a toast, her father speaks. “When she was young, she had a lot of brains and looks. She could have been a judge, a doctor, or a diplomat. But now she is 50 and I have to say she is, without a doubt, my greatest disappointment.”
Fluk’s story of quiet Keith Jarrett and his hit jazz album is told from the point of view of this fiery agent, Vera Brandes. She was a high school drop-out who booked her first concert at age 15 and booked the Koln Opera House for Jarrett, in a dangerous deal made with her mother, at age 18.
Filmmaker challenges
In the planning for the film, Jarrett refused to give permission for the use of the Koln 75 recording, despite its ready availability on YouTube, which I am listening to as I write this review (and hope you are listening to as you read on).
Excuses can be found. Perhaps Jarrett, now 79 and unable to play because of a stroke, didn’t want his career summed up by an early work he does not consider his best. Perhaps there are other reasons as well. He’s a quiet, aloof guy whose language is music, not words.
Ironically, because of Jarrett’s refusal, the filmmakers, dedicated to their mission of making a film on this ground-breaking work of art, had to do a workaround, just like Jarrett realized he would have to do in Koln.
Upon arriving at the Koln Opernhaus, expecting the promised half-ton Bösendorfer Imperial 10-foot concert piano, he was given an inferior, out-of-tune 6-foot rehearsal piano. The black keys in the middle didn’t work, the upper and lower octaves were wrecked, the pedal stuck, and his concert was scheduled for an insulting 11:00 PM curtain call because all the other evening dates were booked.
In “Koln 75,” Vera is not only frantic, wondering if anyone will come to fill the grand opera house for a concert beginning so late at night, but would Jarrett condescend to play?
“Koln 75” is a film that is a work of art. Ido Fluk, a musician himself, has created an improvisational piece worthy of inclusion in film study courses through time.
But, by the way, are you still listening to Koln 75? I think I hear Jarrett slamming the pedals – a little percussion from an inferior instrument for such a magically transporting evening. It makes me think that when there are obstacles and challenges to overcome, there is an opportunity, as Vera pointed out to Jarrett, “… to go somewhere new.”
Credits
Screenwriter/Director: Ido Fluk
Producers: Sol Bondy and Fred Burle
Co-Producers: Ewa Puszczyńska, Dries Phlypo, Erik Glijnis, Leontine Petit, Elena Diesbach, Fabien Arséguel, and Tobias Lehmann
Executive Producers: Oren Moverman and Lillian Lasalle,
Zelene Fowler, MIchael Fowler, Annegret Weitkämper Krug, PAUL Hudson, Talaat Captan, Rain Sharing, Tõnu Hiielaid, Barbaros Özbugutu, Julianne Hausler, Jennifer Fox, and Christoph Lange
Cast: Mala Emde, John Magaro, Susanne Wolff and Michael Chernus
Editor: Anja Siemens
Website (scroll down for play dates): https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/koeln-75
Release: Oct. 17, 2025
“Koln 75” opens at the IFC Center in NYC on Oct. 17 and at Laemmle Royal in LA on Oct. 24.
. . .
Join us on Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/itsjustmovies!
Uh-oh! You might have to move your cursor on the music video so that you are starting at the beginning of their beautiful piece.