How Teenager Vera Brandes Staged a Keith Jarrett Concert That Made Jazz History

Fifty years ago today, 18-year-old Vera Brandes organized a concert for jazz pianist Keith Jarrett in Cologne, West Germany, which went on to make music history: a recording of the concert became the best-selling solo jazz album ever as well as the best-selling piano recording ever. Now director Ido Fluk and producers Sol Bondy and Fred Burle from One Two Films have made a film, titled “Köln 75,” that dramatizes the events leading up to the concert, with its world premiere to be held at the Berlinale next month. Variety spoke to Brandes about her memories of the night. The film’s poster is exclusively revealed below.

“Köln 75” starts with Brandes meeting Ronnie Scott, a British jazz musician and owner of a London jazz club. Scott asks Brandes to arrange some concerts for him in Germany and so, from that chance encounter, she becomes a music promoter, although she has to lock horns with her father. Her fifth concert involves her taking an enormous gamble: she books the 1,400-seat Cologne Opera House for a concert of improvised music by Jarrett.

All does not go to plan. She discovers that the piano supplied by the opera house is not what Jarrett had asked for and is out of tune with a broken pedal, so he refuses to play. But Brandes is determined that the show must go on, and finds a piano tuner who says he can repair the faulty piano.

Having seen the film, which stars Mala Emde and John Magaro, Brandes tells Variety: “I loved it. The tempo is breathtaking. Mala just plays it fantastically. I think she really got it. It brought tears to my eyes to see so many people being so dedicated and engaged in reliving this moment.”

Looking back at that day, Brandes recalls her feelings. “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. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that I can hear in the first moments of a gig if this is going to be special, and musicians tell me they have the same thing: they always know when they walk out there and they grab their instruments and play the first few notes, if this going to be one of these very, very special nights, which don’t happen that often.”

She adds: “This was one of a kind. You cannot replicate such a night, because the magic and the elegance of this whole endeavor was its simplicity and emotional impact. It was certainly not his intellect that drove this. I mean, yes, in the background. He knew exactly what he was doing. But that he did what he did was an emotional statement and that was owing to the very particular circumstances of this whole sequence of events that led to him eventually being able to play after we thought that because of this piano drama we wouldn’t solve it. And I always say: the tuner who called his son to repair the piano to make it playable … these were the heroes of the night, because without them, he wouldn’t have been able to do so.”

Brandes credits Gigi Campi, an Italian architect and jazz impresario who ran an ice-cream parlor in Cologne that doubled as a music venue, as having built an audience for jazz in the city. “He was the center of gravity for culture in Cologne,” she says. His venue happened to be close to the headquarters of WDR, the public broadcaster. “Everybody who was involved in culture or politics, you name it, was passing by his place. You would find Maria Callas and Romy Schneider standing opposite Gigi at the counter, having their Italian espresso, listening to the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band.”

She says of her early days as a music promoter: “We were excited about everything. I said yes to everything. Every day, another gig. I was on the road all the time, and it was just a wild, wild, wild, intense time.”

Asked to mention some of the high points of her career, she says: “Certain bands are probably going to stay with me for the rest of my life. Ralph Towner and his band Oregon, they were amongst the artistically most sophisticated improvisers, collective improvisers I’ve ever worked with. Carla Bley, I did a whole bunch of tours with. She was just amazing, another magician when it comes to doing something totally innovative. The Swiss harp player Andreas Vollenweider. But for me, the most meaningful is Astor Piazzolla as I worked with him very closely and he was just an amazing character and a fantastic composer and an amazing performer.”

After Brandes established herself as a music promoter, she started her own record label. She then left the music business, went back to school, studied psychology, and for 20 years she was the head of music medicine research at the Salzburg Medical University. But she’s still involved in producing music and organizing concerts, she says.

Asked to name the musicians she’s most excited about today, she singles out German pianist Matthias Kirschnereit. “He is regarded to be the best Mozart pianist out there, and he is just completely outstanding,” she says. “And if Taj Mahal and his band were to perform, I would fly to the other end of the world to see them.”