On Friday, January 24, 1975, Keith Jarrett stood in the wings of the Cologne Opera House exhausted, strapped into a back brace, and facing a small, out-of-tune rehearsal piano instead of the Bösendorfer 290 Imperial he had requested. This episode reconstructs the night behind the best-selling solo piano album in history, from 18-year-old promoter Vera Brandes selling out 1,400 seats at four Deutschmarks each for an 11:30 p.m. show, to the freezing rain that made a replacement piano impossible.

We follow Jarrett's sleepless drive from Lausanne in Manfred Eicher's Renault 4, the botched restaurant dinner, his refusal to play and the pleading that changed his mind, and the recording rig ECM had already set up. We then analyze the musical workarounds: avoiding the tinny upper register, rolling left-hand ostinatos to fake a bass the piano lacked ...