Keith Tippett – 25 August 1947-14 June 2020

Pianist and composer Keith Tippett, who passed away on 14 June, aged 72, has long been acknowledged as one of Europe’s foremost proponents of improvised music. Across some fifty years his playing career embraced contemporary jazz, jazz-rock fusion and prog rock as well as both group and solo improvisation, while his compositions included commissions for string quartets, choral works and chamber orchestras. Above all, he maintained an astonishing playing technique that combined a delicate capacity to bring out the voices of the piano with the formidable stamina required for sustained solo performances of immense emotional transparency.

As a schoolboy in Bristol Keith Tippetts (he would later drop the ‘s’) sought out the city’s burgeoning jazz scene in order to watch and learn. He soon graduated from playing trad with schoolmates to a modern jazz residency in the Dugout Club, eventually moving to London in 1967. He formed his first Keith Tippett Group having met Elton Dean, Mark Charig and Nick Evans at the pioneering Barry Island Summer School. The band’s fresh sound and Keith’s evident talents caught the ear of celebrated impresario Giorgio Gomelsky who signed them up for a major record deal as well as introducing the pianist to singer Julie Driscoll, another of his protegees. From an initial musical collaboration their relationship became a marriage that would last for the rest of Keith’s life.

In the musical melting pot of late 1960s London Keith found himself much in demand, including playing for the prog band King Crimson and appearing with them on TV’s Top of the Pops. His ever-widening list of contacts and commitment to breaking down musical barriers inspired Centipede, a 50-strong ensemble uniting classical, rock and jazz musicians for his sprawling avant-garde composition ‘Septober Energy’. Put together for a 1970 benefit concert the project was taken up by RCA, enabling a European tour in a chartered airliner to promote their double-album. The musicians were not paid – Keith would later say that Centipede was achieved from hard work, love and friendship and that a more businesslike approach would have prevented it ever happening.

Subsequent small group recordings for RCA were less well received and Keith moved on, working and recording throughout the 1970s with musicians including Hugh Hopper, Harry Miller, Louis Moholo and Dudu Pukwana. He was very aware of the growing improvised music and free jazz scenes in London, and though averse to being identified with any movement himself he increasingly followed this route in his playing. This culminated in his first solo piano performances on tour in Holland in 1979 (captured on The Unlonely Raindancer album) and the leaner economic times of the 1980s saw him emerge as Mujician on a series of solo improvised albums. That name – given him by his young daughter – would later be used for the powerful improvising quartet formed by Paul Dunmall with Keith, Paul Rogers and Tony Levin. The Mujician band would last for 25 years, notably appearing alongside folk and contemporary music acts at Keith’s eclectic Rare Music Club nights until Tony Levin’s 2011 death. The 80s also saw the beginnings of the ongoing Couple in Spirit duo with Julie Tippetts, with an eponymous album released on EG records in 1987.

From the 1990s onwards Keith received increasingly diverse demands for commissioned compositions and live performances including collaborations with Julie Tippetts and solo improvisations, the latter often featuring objects placed on the piano strings as a distinctive sonic element. He was always clear that, for him, there was a distinction between playing jazz and improvised music with the latter very much about spontaneous communication and engagement with the audience. Among later projects he greatly valued an improvised piano duo with Matthew Bourne, sadly cut short by Keith’s health issues but which had resulted in a particularly transcendent performance at the 2018 Marsden Jazz Festival.

From the outset Keith Tippett’s career displayed an unswerving commitment to the pursuit of the music he wanted to make and resisting the lure of more profitable options. Wary of fashion, he would often say that what mattered was emotional honesty: “If you follow your heart it all comes out in the work and if you play with love the music will always live.” Musical collaborators and audiences would surely agree that he was always true to that philosophy.