Köln 75 (2025) - 7/10

I’m predisposed to love this. I want to love it. Please be worthy of love. If you’re reading this, have watched or intend to watch Köln 75, chances are you’re a Keith Jarrett fan and are aware of the story behind the greatest improvised live recording of The Köln Concert, but aside a young promoter and an out of tune piano, like me, you might be fuzzy on the details. This delivers the details. It’s not as it explains as we open, solely about Jarrett, or the concert. It’s about Vera Brandes (Mala Emde / Susanne Wolff). She’s the accidental teenage concert promoter that makes the magic happen. She has the details. She is the detail. Vera is youthful confidence personified. Hanging out in jazz clubs, she finds herself booking a tour for a visiting Ronnie Scott (Daniel Betts), using her disapproving father’s dentist office, as she sneaks around at night. She’s winging it, improvising, but learns fast. Which sets the pace of this. It’s frenetic and fun, Vera breaking the fourth wall to illustrate her cool nonchalance, as she takes on the live music scene with a little help from her school friend, Isa (Shirin Lilly Eissa). The vibe is hippy rock n roll, mid-70s excess, but as we’re informed, in Berlin “it’s all about jazz” and in Berlin, Vera witnesses Jarrett play and is changed forever. Jarrett is special, but not a household name and even less so before Köln, but Vera wants to change that and needs a venue to show the world what they’re missing. That venue will be the Köln opera house, emphasis on opera… not jazz. One of many hurdles to overcome. She’s a fighter though. Uncompromising. Like Jarrett (John Magaro), who in 1975 is out on a European tour, improvising solo with a piano. This is not easy as Micheal Watts (Michael Chernus), a fictional yet functional jazz critic explains somewhat comically to us. He takes over the narrative for the second act as he travels in a tiny uncomfortable car, with Jarrett and his manager to Köln, pestering gently as we learn of Jarrett’s fragility and spirituality. This is a true story, but there’s some license taken to tell it. It’s not shy about pointing this out though. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jarrett hated this inauthenticity, but it serves the story and delivers us to the gig, with a tired, near broken artist, discovering the promised instrument is not on stage. This is the centrepiece of the narrative. A notoriously spiky artist verses an inexperienced promoter, the clock ticking, the tension mounting. Köln should never have happen and according to Vera here, it very nearly didn’t. It’s knife edge stuff. It does feel overly dramatic in places and the performances are generally dialled up to eleven. It’s a bit clunky. A bit overly sentimental. Despite this though, it very good. Entertaining, gripping and even if it embellishes a little and hits the drama pedal hard, it looks and feels authentic. If nothing else, this is well weighted tribute to Keith Jarrett and Vera Brandes and that’s worth it alone.

7/10