He was labelled as temperamental because of his sensitivity to how his audiences respected his music-making on stage and how music in general should instill respect. The piano is a delicate and yet demanding temperamental instrument. It is temperamental especially if you go by the reasons for Jarrett’s labeling.
So many, church hall and church basement, and community center pianos are workhorses, so often with the battle scars to prove it; tough but vulnerable. The instrument demands ways of execution and touch when playing it in order for emotion and color to be presented and portrayed as effected by it. It doesn’t just do it, the expert player knows how to coax, play, and play with it to get at its myriad of effects, using its keyboard and strings to bring to the surface the spelling of feelings, mood, and textures.
Put Jarrett together with that kind of demand, and his unique ability to command the demand, and the idea of temperamental becomes an energy transcending a simple definition as an attitude.
Keith Jarrett is the piano’s player.