The Cure is a live concert by Keith Jarrett's trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, recorded at Town Hall in New York on 21 April 1990. Seven years after the group's first studio sessions for ECM, it finds the trio at full strength on a New York stage. Bebop tunes, ballads and a blues sit beside a single Jarrett original, and every piece is stretched far beyond its written form.
Jarrett plays piano, Peacock double bass and DeJohnette drums, the line-up that had first recorded together in January 1983 at Power Station in New York for Standards, Vol. 1. The Town Hall concert came six months after the Cologne performance issued as Tribute, and the trio returned to Power Station in October 1991 for Bye Bye Blackbird. Manfred Eicher produced the album and Jan Erik Kongshaug was the engineer. The recording was mixed at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, and ECM released it in October 1991.
The set opens with Thelonious Monk's Bemsha Swing, a quick, angular theme that Jarrett states before the rhythm section joins in swing time. Old Folks and Body and Soul are long ballad performances, the latter over thirteen minutes. On Old Folks DeJohnette draws many colours from his brushes and Peacock takes a long solo. Blame It on My Youth is a slow reading of the Oscar Levant song, built from sweeping upward phrases. The ten-minute title piece, the only Jarrett composition, is followed by Duke Ellington's Things Ain't What They Used to Be, which closes the concert. Dizzy Gillespie's Woody'n You and the film song Golden Earrings complete the programme.
Reviewing the album for ECM Reviews in 2012, Tyran Grillo singled out Blame It on My Youth as the highlight of the set: "Such narrative perfection is hard to come by." He recommended the album as an introduction to the trio and concluded that it "earns an easy spot in the Keith Jarrett Trio's top five". He also praised DeJohnette's understated cymbal work and Peacock's solos on Old Folks and Woody'n You.
This is the CD edition of ECM 1440, first released in 1991. It holds eight pieces from the Town Hall concert, with a running time of over seventy-five minutes.
