About

I first heard the Manuel Barrueco guitar transcription of this piece on marimba back in 2015(ish), and I was completely swept away with the groove and beauty of it. It’s fun, it’s beautiful, and it’s not only demanding technically, but also musically. And when I really got into the learning process, I completely fell in love with it. I performed it on one of my undergraduate recitals and then moved on to the next piece, but continued to listen to the original regularly.

Cut to 2020, I thought this would be a great piece to work back up to audition for Performer Diploma programs in New York, but when I really started to dig in to it again, something felt off. I’m not sure if it was my familiarity with Keith Jarrett’s recording, but I was finding that I was having a lot of difficulty getting the guitar transcription to really sound right on the marimba. Some of the voicings made it difficult to bring out or hear the important melodic figures, some of the bass figures go up when in the original they go down, etc. etc… and I thought, while this transcription is probably great for the guitar, maybe it’s just not quite right for marimba.

So as soon as auditions finished, I found Keith Jarrett’s original transcription of the recording, and set to work re-learning the piece from zero from that, making changes for the marimba as necessary and to get it closer to the original recording. Needless to say, there are some pretty massive differences. Anyway, life got in the way and it took five extra years to actually get a recording of this “transcribed for marimba” version of The Köln Concert, but here it is! I hope you enjoy.