Köln 75 (Ido Fluk, 2025)

Köln 75 is the engaging biographical music drama about the 18-year old female concert promotor who put together the legendary concert by jazz genius Keith Jarrett in the Opera House of the German city of Cologne in January 1975.

One of the reasons The Köln Concert became so legendary is because it was recorded and released as a live album, which went on to sell four million copies worldwide, making it to this day the best selling solo jazz and solo piano album to this day.

What makes it even more legendary is that Jarrett already a renowned freeform jazz musician, was forced to play not on his favored Bösendorfer Imperial but on a broken down baby grand, that was more or less refurbished in the hours before he took the stage at 11.30 at night, after a performance of the opera Lulu had finished.

Jarrett was still severely limited in his playing, which meant that the pianist, who always played pure improvisation, had to come up with music that was unusual even for him.

Now after all this build-up I have to tell you what the main problem with the movie is. It’s the fact that Jarrett has long since distanced himself from the recording of the evening, claiming he has played much better concerts. Therefore he wouldn’t allow writer-director Ido Fluk to use any of his music.

That must have been a bit of a setback. There is however a lot of other seventies music in the movie, from the likes of Can, Neu and Floh de Cologne, and also some music (by Stefan Rusconi) in the style of Keith Barrett.

Still, I guess it’s a good thing that in the end the movie isn’t about Jarrett so much as it is a portrait of the young woman who made the entire evening possible, even as it seemed to slip through her hands at the eleventh hour.

Meet Vera Brandes (Mala Emde), who had already made quite a name for herself as a teenage concert promotor of jazz concerts in the music scene of Cologne.

Köln 75 is both a biographical drama and a feminist coming of age story, with a fiery performance by Emde, and fine supporting turns by her coterie of friends (Shirin Lilly Eissa, Enno Trebs, Leon Blohm), the brother (Leo Meier) who loved to hate her, the father (Ulrich Tukur) who simply hated her because she didn’t want to become a dentist like him and the mother (Jördis Triebel), who couldn’t help but love her (and who lend Vera the 10K she needed to put up the show in the first place).

The result is a highly engaging but also somewhat uneven film, that in the middle section takes a sudden detour by sending a freelance journalist (Michael Chernus) on the road with Jarrett (John Magaro) and record label owner Manfred Eicher (Alexander Scheer).

It’s as if a manic music movie like 24 Hour Party People (Michael Winterbottom, 2002), about the Manchester music scene suddenly suddenly becomes a more thoughtful movie like End of the Tour (James Ponsoldt, 2015), about the late, reclusive author David Foster Wallace.

But surprises like this keep the movie enjoyable even if its little cinematic tricks like freeze frames and talking to the camera wear a little thin as the movie goes on. But although if the movie is far more formulaic than a Jarrett concert could ever by, in the end Vera has to rely on her own knack for improvisation to get the job done.

So even if Köln 75 won’t ever be as legendary as the concert that inspired it, it’s still a fun ride for general audiences, while it’s probably essential viewing for jazz aficionados with more than a passing interest what went on in the run-up to one of the most legendary jazz concerts of all time.

I give it 3 1/2 stars!

Note: Köln 75 had its world premiere at the Berlinale earlier this year. Since then it has made its way around the world, both in the festival circuit and with theatrical releases, mostly in Europe but also in the United States. On Thursday, it is released in The Netherlands.