Köln 75: ‘absorbing’ tribute to woman behind legendary gig

Keith Jarrett’s “The Köln Concert” is not only the bestselling jazz solo album of all time; it is the bestselling piano album of any kind, said Demetrios Matheou on The Arts Desk. Yet the concert it records would never have taken place had it not been for the determination of a local teenager.

Ido Fluk’s film takes that story and “improvises the hell out of it”: it focuses not on Jarrett (we don’t hear even a note of the album) but on Vera Brandes, the charismatic 18-year-old promoter who booked him, and then – when the exhausted, and notoriously testy, musician threatened to walk away – all but dragged him onto the stage. “The result is a jaunty, charming, highly enjoyable paean to both artists and the many who support them.”

The film opens at Brandes’ 50th birthday party, said Ben Nicholson on Little White Lies; then takes us back to the 1970s, a “freer, simpler time”, when the spirited young Vera (Mala Emde) has stumbled into organising German tour dates for Ronnie Scott. At a jazz festival in Berlin, she sees Jarrett (John Magaro) improvise, and is so mesmerised that she resolves to bring him to Cologne.

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The action follows a familiar trajectory (Vera faces various obstacles, including the disapproval of her stern father), and Fluk resorts to familiar devices (including fourth-wall-breaking lectures to the camera about jazz) but “it’s absorbing and fun”, if not fresh or impactful.

“Köln 75” has a “self-aware swagger” that sometimes feels effortful, said Leila Latif in Empire, and some of the broad comedic moments jar. But Emde is superb – and in the final, suspenseful stretch, the film becomes exhilarating.