CD version. My Song is the second studio album by the quartet that Keith Jarrett led with Scandinavian musicians in the late 1970s, often called his European Quartet. Recorded in Oslo in November 1977 and released by ECM in June 1978, it holds six Jarrett compositions that behave like songs, with clear melodies and an unhurried pulse. Together with Belonging it is the core of the group's studio work.
The band was Jarrett on piano and percussion, Jan Garbarek on tenor and soprano saxophones, Palle Danielsson on double bass and Jon Christensen on drums. They had first recorded together in April 1974 in Oslo for Belonging. In 1979 they played the Village Vanguard, captured on Nude Ants, and toured Japan, documented on Personal Mountains and, decades later, on Sleeper. My Song was made at Talent Studio with Manfred Eicher producing and Jan Erik Kongshaug engineering.
The title track states a simple, songlike theme over Jarrett's piano and stays close to it, which is much of its appeal. Questar opens the record with a strong melodic line for Garbarek, whose tone, warm but incisive, leads the way again on Tabarka. Country gives Danielsson a bass solo inside a gentle, folk-like tune, while Mandala is the most open piece, with Garbarek's solo spread over a busy, colourful rhythm section. The ten-minute The Journey Home closes the album and travels furthest. In the words of critic Ted Gioia, it moves "from a melancholy rubato" to "a spirited folksy melody with a very danceable beat" before settling into a slow 9/8 section.
Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Scott Yanow called it "the best known of the Jarrett-Garbarek collaborations" and their most rewarding meeting on record. Gioia, writing about the closing piece for Jazz.com, observed that "the four musicians enter into the inner workings of this music with perfect sympathy". The record stands apart from Jarrett's American quartet of the same years, with Garbarek's sound and the Scandinavian rhythm section giving his writing a cooler, lyrical setting.
This is the CD edition, catalogue number ECM 1115, of the album first released on LP in 1978.
