snobb
"Belonging" is the first Keith Jarrett recording on ECM with Jan Garbarek and his rhythm section (often known as Jarrett's European quartet). Compared to Jarrett's American quartet, the music here is less experimental and adventurous and the whole sound is influenced by Garbarek's Nordic folk.
The obvious project leader is Jarrett for sure. His playful piano improvs are the central sound of the album's music and the most attractive element. Garbarek's sax sounds far from his experimental works of the early 70s and shows his growing trend to melodic simplified tunes influenced by folklore and with only occasional interesting improvs. He has enough space on this album, but compared to Jarrett's piano, which is very jazzy in an American manner, Garbarek's musicianship adds more simplified feeling to the sound.
The rhythm section is competent, but as in cases with previous Garbarek releases, they are a great supporting team and hardly more. Musically the album varies from post-bop with serious Jarrett classical influences to a more polished mix of third stream and Nordic folk, but in all cases, the sound is well rounded, emotionally cool and only Jarrett's great piano playing makes it alive.
A borderline album in many senses: after its release Jarrett will continue working for ECM recording a few more albums with the European quartet. Garbarek will develop similar musical direction on his later albums, but without Jarrett's jazz roots, Garbarek's music very soon will be transformed into cold background contemporary jazz/world fusion close to new age. The sound presented on this album (as well as many similar releases of the mid to late 70s) will evolve to post-bop rooted, but comfortably-polished melodic contemporary jazz of the 90s.