Keith Jarrett performing in Antibes, July 2003. Photo: Olivier Bruchez. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Keith Jarrett concerts often unfold like a running feud: with his piano, with the venue, with the acoustics, with the audience, with his own precarious emotional state.

The piano player is notoriously temperamental, thorny, moody. Jarrett is a compulsive artist, if not a perfectionist, and he can be petulant. He has singled out audience members he suspects of recording his performances (often wrongly) and has been known to stalk off the stage at the disruptive sound of coughing in the crowd—once, in Paris, with Alexander Cockburn and Alya Rea in attendance.