After recording his first solo piano album for ECM in November 1971 with "Facing You," Jarrett's second solo career step followed in March 1973, when ECM producer Manfred Eicher had the pianist's first solo performance recorded for a record production. Four months later, the procedure was repeated in Bremen. In fact, material for at least three more long-playing records had been recorded at that time during other performances. However, the artist and his producer refrained from releasing the recordings because they did not meet their technical requirements. The concert in Bremen was actually under an unfortunate star, since Jarrett had been suffering from a back injury during the entire solo tour and had not slept a wink of sleep for 24 hours before the performance in the Hanseatic city. Even the ten-minute sound check he could only complete with difficulty and was already toying with the idea of having to cancel the concert at the last minute. Fortunately - as we know - this did not happen. And at the concert itself there was nothing left of Jarrett's agony (at least for the listeners) The result was the recording of "Solo Concerts Bremen/Lausanne" on three LPs (or later two CDs). Unlike on "Facing You", where the longest of the eight pieces had a running time of "only" ten minutes and all the numbers still had proper titles and a song-like character, Jarrett now no longer played pieces in the proper sense, but epic improvisations that stretched over up to 64 minutes. No one had dared such an improvisation marathon before. All the more surprising was how brilliantly the still young Keith Jarrett mastered this task. But also for Manfred Eicher and his still quite young ECM label, the release of a three LP box set of piano solo improvisations was an extremely daring undertaking "These are the recordings that made Keith Jarrett famous," wrote American critic Scott Yanow in a review of the album. "The two solo piano recitals present a freely improvising Jarrett who never seems to run out of ideas. Often a simple phrase evolves into a complex sequence through repetition and subtle variations, eventually leading into a new phrase. Despite the length [of the improvisations], the music keeps you riveted, making these recordings an album that no jazz collection should be without." In his accompanying text, Keith Jarrett curiously wrote in 1973 that this album was not designed to sell millions of copies. But even if the sales of "Solo Concerts Bremen/Lausanne" did not reach the dizzying sales figures of the "Köln Concert", this box set developed into an absolute bestseller and longseller of jazz. And from an artistic point of view, many jazz critics and Jarrett connoisseurs consider the music of "Bremen/Lausanne" to be even more sophisticated and exciting than that of the even more successful "Köln Concert". Recorded on March 20, 1973 at the Salle de Spectacles D'Epalinges in Lausanne & July 12, 1973 at the Kleiner Sendesaal of Radio Bremen