0:15

Pushkin. As

0:23

the night draws in and the fire

0:25

blazes on the hearth. We

0:27

warn the children by telling them stories.

0:31

The juniper tree teaches them,

0:33

Oh, I don't know what it's just horrendous.

0:35

Don't google it. But

0:38

my stories are for the education

0:41

of the grown ups, and my

0:43

stories are all true. I'm

0:46

Tim Harford. Gather close

0:49

and listen to my cautionary tales.

1:06

Late in January nineteen

1:08

seventy five, a German

1:10

teenager named Vera Brandes

1:13

walked out onto the stage of the Cologne

1:15

Opera House. The auditorium

1:18

was empty, lit only

1:20

by the dim green glow of the emergency

1:23

exit sign. This was the most

1:25

exciting day of Vera's life.

1:28

Vera loved jazz and was

1:30

frustrated that there just wasn't enough

1:33

good jazz in Cologne, so,

1:35

at the age of sixteen, she had

1:38

started to arrange concerts herself.

1:41

Tonight would be the fifth and

1:43

by far the biggest. Vera

1:46

Brandes had persuaded the Cologne Opera

1:48

House to host a late night concert

1:50

of jazz from the American pianist

1:53

Keith Jarrett, a remarkable

1:55

venue for a remarkable twenty

1:58

nine year old musician. Jarrett

2:00

had already played with greats such as

2:02

Art Blakey and Miles Davis, but

2:05

now he was on his own. The

2:08

vast auditor was sold out.

2:10

Fourteen hundred people were coming,

2:12

easily the largest audience for Jarrett's

2:15

tour of improvised piano performances.

2:18

In just a few hours, Keith Jarrett

2:20

would walk out alone on that stage.

2:23

He'd sit down at the piano, and

2:25

without rehearsal or sheet music, he'd

2:28

begin to play. But

2:30

right now Vera was introducing

2:33

Keith to the piano in question, and

2:35

it wasn't going well. Jarrett

2:38

looked at the instrument a little warily, played

2:41

a few notes, walked around

2:43

it, tried a few more. His producer,

2:46

Manfred Eicher, joined in. Neither

2:49

of them spoke to Vera. Instead,

2:51

they were huddled together. Then

2:54

Manfred Eicher came over to Vera,

2:57

if you don't give another piano, Keith

2:59

can't play tonight. There'd

3:02

been a mistake. Jarrett was

3:04

and is an exacting musician. He

3:07

likes things to be perfect, absolutely

3:09

the way he wants them, and he'd

3:12

requested a specific piano, a

3:15

Bursendorfer Imperial. The

3:17

opera house had told Vera brands

3:20

they had just the thing, but somehow

3:22

the piano on stage was nothing

3:24

like what had been promised. As

3:26

Vera Brands remembered, they found

3:29

this tiny little Burstendorfer that

3:31

was completely out of tune. The

3:33

upper and the lower octave was wrecked.

3:35

The black notes in the middle didn't work, the pedal

3:38

stuck. It was unplayable,

3:42

absolutely unplayable, and

3:45

quite understandably, Jarrett didn't

3:47

want to play it. And when it became

3:50

clear there was no way to get a replacement

3:52

piano on stage. When it became clear

3:54

that it was the unplayable piano or

3:57

nothing, Keith Jarrett

3:59

opted for nothing. He walked

4:02

out into the rain, leaving a bedraggled

4:04

Vera Brands trailing behind him,

4:07

begging him not to cancel. When

4:11

fourteen hundred people showed up for their

4:13

late night concert, Vera

4:15

Brandas was going to find herself

4:18

facing a riot. You're

4:21

listening to another cautionary

4:23

tale

4:46

about the same time as Keith Jarrett's

4:48

encounter with the unplayable piano.

4:51

On the other side of Germany, a very

4:53

different musician was scrambling over

4:55

his own musical obstacle. Course David

4:58

Bowie, the unearthly ambisexual

5:01

rock icon had moved to Berlin.

5:04

Bowie had had a grim, alienating

5:06

period living in Los Angeles. He was

5:08

beset by legal troubles, his marriage

5:10

alternated between indifference and contempt,

5:13

and he was taking far too many hard

5:15

drugs. It was a dangerous

5:17

period for me, Bowie reflected. But

5:20

Bowie had a very different attitude to

5:22

his music than Jarrett. While

5:25

Jarrett was a purist, Bowie

5:27

actually enjoyed self imposed

5:29

obstacles. Bowie believed

5:31

that accidents were to be treasured, even

5:34

planned, rather than avoided. That's

5:37

why he asked Brian Eno

5:39

to join him and his producer Tony Visconti

5:42

in Berlin. They'd

5:44

meet regularly in Hansa Studio

5:46

too, the Big Hall by the Wall,

5:48

as Bowie called it. It

5:50

was a beautiful, parquet flawed concert

5:53

hall, popular for recording chamber

5:55

music, and a few hundred feet away

5:57

from the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Eno

6:00

took to showing up at the Hansa studio

6:03

with a soft black box containing

6:05

a selection of curious cards

6:07

he called oblique strategy is. They're

6:10

quite simple, these cards, small

6:12

black text on a white background, curved

6:15

corners. They're about the size of playing

6:17

cards, Although there are more than a hundred

6:19

of them, making a thick deck to be

6:21

shuffled and consulted. Each

6:24

card has a different instruction, and

6:26

you never know which one you're going to get. Eno

6:29

once told me, you have to pick one

6:32

if you don't like it. Tough. Whenever

6:36

the studio sessions were running aground,

6:39

Eno would draw a card at random

6:41

and relay its strange orders. Be

6:44

the first not to do what has never

6:46

not been done before. Look

6:49

at the order in which you do things. Emphasize

6:53

the floors, change

6:55

instrument roles. Sure

6:57

enough, during the recording of David Bowie's

7:00

Lodger album, Carlos Alamar,

7:02

one of the world's greatest guitarists,

7:05

was told to play the drums instead another

7:08

guitarist, and Balu was asked

7:10

to improvise a solo in response

7:12

to a recording that would eventually become

7:14

the single boys Keep Swinging,

7:18

So don't

7:20

worry about the key, just play. Bellu

7:23

described the experience. It was like a like

7:25

a freight train coming through my mind. It's

7:29

an amazing solo, though, and

7:36

that astonishing wailing guitar

7:39

at the beginning of Heroes, that's

7:41

Robert Fripp. Fripp

7:47

was just playing around with guitar feedback,

7:49

but when Visconti patched together the random

7:52

noises, the effect was

7:54

beautiful. The poet Simon

7:56

Armitage describes the cards as if you're

7:58

asking the blood in your brain to

8:01

flow in another direction that

8:05

doesn't sound fun. Yet the strange,

8:08

chaos working process produced

8:11

some of the decade's most critically acclaimed

8:13

albums, Low Heroes

8:16

and Lodger. You can't argue

8:18

with the results. I

8:20

sought out Brian Eno to discuss this

8:23

strange approach of deliberately adding

8:25

obstacles. Eno is

8:27

to me one of the most interesting musicians

8:29

alive. He began his musical

8:32

career in the nineteen seventies with Roxy

8:34

Music, where he'd create strange sound

8:36

effects and play synthesizer with a giant

8:39

plastic knife and fork. He

8:41

created music for Airports,

8:43

a simple, beautiful landmark in

8:45

ambient music, My Life

8:48

in the Bush of Ghosts, an influential

8:50

sample rich collaboration with David

8:52

Byrne, and Another

8:54

Green World, the record that Prince

8:56

once named as his biggest inspiration.

9:00

Eno has collaborated with Talking Heads,

9:02

You Two, Twilight, Tharpe, Cold

9:04

Play, Laurie Anderson, Gavin Bryars,

9:07

Paul Simon and the Cult direct to

9:09

David Lynch. When the music

9:11

magazine Pitchfork listed its top

9:13

hundred albums of the nineteen seventies,

9:16

Brian Eno had a hand in more than

9:18

a quarter of them. And of course

9:20

there's his remarkable collaboration with

9:22

David Bowie. But I wanted

9:25

to talk to Brian not just because

9:27

he's produced beautiful music with remarkable

9:29

people using very strange methods,

9:32

but also because Brian Eno is,

9:34

like me, a nerd.

9:37

He thinks hard about why obstacles

9:40

are so often helpful. Listen

9:42

on and I'll tell you what I learned.

10:02

You know, that feeling of being a tourist

10:05

in a totally foreign land, how

10:08

rich all the tiny details are,

10:10

how densely layered the memories. You

10:12

can look back on a day and marvel at just

10:15

how much you manage to pack in, whereas

10:17

a day of your normal routines can be hard to

10:19

remember at all. One

10:21

of the things that Brian Eno is trying to

10:23

achieve with his strange cards is

10:25

that same sense of attention

10:28

of being alert. The enemy

10:30

of creative work is boredom, actually,

10:33

and the friend is alertness. Now,

10:36

I think what makes you alert is

10:38

to be faced with a situation that is beyond

10:41

your control, so you have to be watching

10:43

it very carefully to see how it unfolds,

10:45

to be able to stay on top of it. That

10:48

kind of alertness is

10:50

exciting. There's nothing

10:53

like an unfamiliar problem to make

10:55

you start focusing. If things

10:57

feel out of your control, maybe even

10:59

a little dangerous, that gets

11:01

the adrenaline flowing, and, in the right

11:03

circumstances, the creative juices

11:06

too. This attention

11:08

grabbing at applies whether we're talking about

11:10

trying to play a strange instrument, navigate

11:13

a strange place, or work

11:15

together with a strange person. And while

11:17

it sounds dramatic, it can work its

11:20

magic at a subliminal level. It

11:22

can be something as subtle as whether

11:24

the words we're reading on a page look

11:26

familiar or odd. Consider

11:31

a study by the psychologists Connor

11:33

Diamond Yeoman, Daniel Oppenheimer,

11:36

and Erica Vaughan. They teamed

11:38

up with high school teachers getting them to

11:40

reformat the teaching handouts they used.

11:43

Half their classes, chosen at random,

11:45

got the original materials in standard

11:47

fonts such as Times New Roman.

11:50

The other half got the same documents

11:52

reformatted into one of three challenging

11:55

fonts, the dense text

11:57

of Haddensfeiler, the cursive

12:00

flourishes of Monotype Corceiver, or

12:02

the zesty bounce of comic sans

12:04

It talicized. These fonts are,

12:07

let's be honest, distres acting

12:09

and hard to read. But the ugly

12:12

fonts didn't hamper the students at

12:14

all. Students who had been taught

12:16

using them ended up scoring higher

12:18

on their exams. We don't know exactly

12:20

why, but it seems that the strange

12:22

fonts prompted them to pay attention,

12:25

to slow down, and to think

12:27

about what they were reading. If

12:29

such obstacles make us focus

12:31

and think harder, they may end

12:33

up not being obstacles at all, but

12:36

secret weapons. There's

12:45

a second reason that the oblique strategies

12:48

may have helped David Bowie. They

12:50

pushed him to try something fresh. Brianino

12:54

described to me the tendency of highly

12:56

skilled musicians to end up exploring

12:58

a narrow territory because it's the

13:00

only place they feel completely comfortable.

13:03

You get more and more competent at dealing

13:05

with that place, and your

13:07

cliches become

13:10

increasingly clichde.

13:12

But when you're forced to start from somewhere

13:14

new the cliches can be replaced

13:17

with moments of magic. This

13:19

effect is well understood far outside

13:22

the realm of music. Computer

13:24

scientists use algorithms to

13:26

look for solutions to complex problems,

13:29

and those algorithms often use the

13:31

tactic of stepping back and adding

13:33

some randomness part way through their

13:35

search. What sort of complex

13:38

problems do I have in mind? Are there are

13:40

plenty? Planning efficient

13:42

roots for a fleet of parcel delivery

13:44

trucks, figuring out the best layout

13:46

for a silicon chip. Such problems

13:48

have so many possible solutions that

13:51

it's impossible even for a computer

13:53

to check them all. So computer

13:55

scientists have developed algorithms that

13:57

try to find a solution that may not be perfect

14:00

but is good enough. You'd

14:03

be surprised at how many

14:05

of these algorithms add random

14:07

shocks and remixes. Those

14:09

shocks are there to prevent the algorithm

14:11

getting stuck on a bad solution. In

14:13

the jargon, that's called a local

14:16

optimum, but you or I would

14:18

simply call it a dead end. The

14:20

random shocks offer a way of backing

14:22

out of the dead end and trying something

14:25

else. This might seem a

14:27

long way from our everyday concerns.

14:30

We're not musical geniuses and we're

14:32

not computer algorithms, but

14:34

the same logic is at play in the most

14:36

humdrum circumstances, such as

14:39

our daily commute. For

14:41

example, in my own long standing

14:43

commute across the London Underground, I

14:45

know exactly where on the platform I should stand

14:47

when I get on the first tube train to ensure

14:50

that after riding nine stops, including

14:52

a change of lines, I'm in the perfect

14:54

position to be first on the escalator out

14:56

of London Bridge Station and thus at

14:58

the front of the line for coffee the

15:00

Monmouth Coffeehouse near the tube

15:02

exit. Fine differences

15:05

in where I stand on a train platform

15:07

on one side of the city determine how

15:09

quickly I get my coffee half

15:11

an hour later on the other side.

15:14

Yes, I promise myself I'd never become

15:16

that person. Happened anyway, And

15:18

however you commute, you likely

15:21

have your own little shortcuts and time

15:23

saving habits. Assuming

15:25

that is, those habits really

15:27

do save you time, because,

15:30

according to the logic I've been outlining,

15:32

if you commute being forced to

15:35

change your plans, they actually

15:37

help you in the long run. It's

15:39

the obstacle in your path that forces

15:42

you to find a better path. But

15:45

in what circumstances might the London

15:48

underground possibly be disrupted? I hear

15:50

you ask well. In February

15:52

twenty fourteen, two trade unions

15:55

representing workers on the subway launched

15:57

a forty eight hour strike which

15:59

closed well over half the stations

16:01

on the system. The first

16:04

day of the strike was wet, as well as

16:06

being cold and dark, which will

16:08

have discouraged people from simply walking or

16:10

getting on a bike. The trains and

16:12

buses that day were rammed full

16:14

of grumpy commuters trying to figure

16:17

out how to get around the disruption. After

16:20

the strike, the economists Ferdinand

16:22

roush Seawan Larcom and Tim Williams

16:24

looked at data from London's electronic

16:27

farecard system. Those fair cards

16:29

work on the subway, the buses, and the overground

16:32

trains too. Rausch and his

16:34

colleagues identified people who had to change

16:36

from their regular route during the strike.

16:39

Most changed back again when the strike was over,

16:41

of course, but many did not. They

16:44

realized that they'd been getting their

16:46

own commute wrong all

16:48

their lives, and all it took

16:51

to prod them into finding a better way was

16:53

two days of disruption. So

16:59

there are two reasons why an obstacle might

17:01

actually help us solve a problem.

17:03

First, the ugly font effect,

17:06

the strange and familiar or even

17:08

threatening, grabs your

17:10

attention and holds it. You're

17:12

not checking your phone, you're not daydreaming,

17:15

you can't afford to miss a second. And

17:17

then there's the tube strike effect, the

17:20

way a random disruption forces

17:22

you to try something totally new, whether

17:24

by forcing us to pay attention or by prodding

17:27

us to try something different. These obstacles

17:29

can actually help us find better solutions

17:32

to the problems we face. But

17:35

this is still a cautionary tale

17:37

because it's a story of danger.

17:40

The danger is that we shun these

17:42

obstacles, avoid difficulties, flee

17:44

from problems, when in fact we

17:47

might flourish from facing them head

17:49

on. Keith Jarrett, after

17:51

all, didn't celebrate the appearance

17:53

of a bad piano on stage at his largest

17:56

ever concert, rubbing his hands in

17:58

glee at the opportunity to have his creativity

18:01

supercharged by the challenge. Of

18:03

course he didn't. He walked away.

18:06

Who wouldn't when

18:09

faced with the unplayable piano? We

18:11

resist. We

18:26

resist all sorts of obstacles,

18:29

but the most obvious example of this resistance

18:31

comes when the obstacle is a strange or

18:33

unfamiliar person. There's

18:36

a large body of research that suggests

18:38

a diverse group of people I mean

18:40

people of different ages, genders, nationalities,

18:43

professions, and political views.

18:45

That diverse group of people is

18:47

more likely to find solutions or make

18:49

better judgments than a group full of

18:51

lookalikes, everyone echoing everyone

18:54

else. When pulling together a

18:56

team, our instinct is to go for quality,

18:58

the best people we can find, but

19:00

perhaps instead we should be going for

19:03

variety. One analogy

19:05

is that different perspectives, skills,

19:07

and experiences are different

19:09

tools and the toolbox. A well

19:12

stocked toolbox is more useful than

19:14

a case full of hammers, even if

19:16

they're really good hammers. But

19:18

while we should be looking for a diverse

19:20

group, we tend to gravitate to

19:22

the familiar friends rather than

19:24

strangers, people who look and sound

19:27

like us, who reflect our own

19:29

views and make us feel comfortable.

19:32

We are hammers looking to get cozy with

19:34

other hammers, and we view wrenches

19:36

and screwdrivers and saws as

19:38

awkward misfits. There's

19:41

an elegant experiment that underlines

19:44

this point, conducted by the psychologists

19:46

Katherine Phillips, Katie Lillianquist,

19:48

and Margaret Neil. They gave

19:50

murder mystery problems to students. These

19:53

problems consisted of dossiers of information

19:56

with alibis and evidence, witness

19:58

statements, and a choice of three possible

20:00

suspects, so who

20:03

committed the crime. The

20:05

researchers divided the groups into two sets

20:08

at random. In one set, the

20:10

murder mysteries would be solved by four

20:12

people who knew each other four friends.

20:14

In the other set, the dossiers would be given

20:16

to three friends and one stranger

20:19

for maximum awkwardness. You

20:22

can see where I'm going with this. Obviously,

20:24

I'm going to say that the groups with the stranger solved

20:27

the problem more effectively, which they did,

20:30

but the scale of the improvement may

20:32

surprise you. The groups of friends

20:34

did better than a random guess between the three

20:36

options, but the groups with a stranger

20:39

did much better yet, with a success

20:41

rate of seventy five percent. In

20:44

fact, the groups with the stranger were

20:46

as far ahead of the groups of friends as

20:48

the groups of friends were ahead of pure random

20:51

guesswork. But what's really

20:53

interesting is not just that the groups with the

20:55

stranger made smarter decisions than

20:58

how they felt about it. When

21:00

the scientists interviewed the groups of four

21:02

friends, they had a nice time, and they also

21:04

thought they'd done a good job. They were

21:06

complaisant when they spoke to thee

21:09

friends and the stranger, they hadn't enjoyed

21:11

themselves, and they were full of doubts about

21:13

whether they'd chosen the guilty man. I

21:16

think that really exemplifies the challenge.

21:19

Here's what seems like an obstacle, this awkward

21:22

stranger sitting in the group and spoiling

21:24

everyone's fun. But the obstacle

21:26

is actually a secret weapon. The stranger

21:29

dramatically improves the performance of the

21:31

group, yet the people in the group

21:33

don't realize it. The same

21:36

thing happened with Brian Eno and his

21:38

Curious Cards. The

21:40

musicians hated them.

21:43

That can't have been a surprise to Eno.

21:46

On that earlier Eno album that Prince

21:48

loved so much, Another Green World,

21:50

Eno asked Phil Collins, the superstar

21:53

drummer from Genesis, to play the

21:56

instructions from the cards. So infuriated

21:59

Collins he was reduced to hurling

22:01

beer cans across the studio in frustration.

22:06

Faced with one piece of card inspired

22:08

foolish. The guitarist Carlos

22:10

Alomar told, you know this experiment

22:13

is stool did The violinist

22:15

Simon House commented the sessions

22:17

often sounded terrible. Carlos

22:20

did have a problem simply because he's very gifted

22:22

and professional. He can't bring himself

22:24

to play stuff that sounds like crap. How

22:27

do we persuade ourselves to engage

22:29

with broken tools, to impossible

22:31

deadlines or awkward people, when

22:34

really all we want to do is

22:36

her beer? Carris back

22:42

in dark, rainy Cologne in

22:44

nineteen seventy five, young Vera

22:47

Brands was in big trouble,

22:50

an opera house full of paying customers,

22:52

an unplayable piano, and an

22:55

understandably reluctant Keith

22:57

Jarrett. So she did the

22:59

only thing she could. She ran after

23:02

Jarrett found him waiting in his car, flung

23:04

open the door and begged him

23:06

not to cancel, and Keith

23:08

Jarrett, looking out at this rain

23:10

drenched teenage girl, took

23:13

pity on her. Never forget, just

23:16

for you, Keith Jarrett would

23:18

play after all, while

23:21

a tuner worked to straighten out

23:23

some of the kinks in the unplayable piano.

23:26

Vera Brands took Jarrett and Manfred

23:28

Ikea to an Italian restaurant to get some food

23:31

before the show. Jarrett barely

23:33

had time to bolt down a few mouthfuls

23:35

of pastor before rushing back to the opera

23:37

House to face the piano. The

23:40

instrument was now in tune, but

23:42

still had some silent keys, a malfunctioning

23:45

sustain pedal, and was harsh and tinny

23:47

in the upper register. But, of course, not

23:49

being a full sized concert grand,

23:52

it was simply too quiet. If

23:54

played in the conventional style, it would never

23:56

fill the vast auditorium with music.

24:00

But it was too late to back out. Now utterly

24:02

alone in front of fourteen hundred

24:05

people, Jarrett walked

24:07

back out onto the stage of the opera House.

24:09

He sat down at the unplayable

24:11

piano and began. The

24:16

minute he played the first note, everybody

24:20

knew this was magic.

24:24

That's something I will never

24:27

forget. A first tone,

24:29

and everybody was totally

24:33

mesmerized. Jarrett

24:36

was avoiding those tinny upper

24:38

registers. He was sticking to the middle

24:40

tones of the keyboard, which gave the piece

24:42

a soothing ambient quality.

24:53

His left hand produced rumbling, repetitive

24:55

bass riffs as a way of covering

24:57

up the piano's lack of resonance. The

25:00

music had a trance like quality

25:02

as a result. But Jarrett

25:05

couldn't simply relax into that easy

25:07

listening zone because the tiny piano

25:10

simply wasn't loud enough. He stood

25:12

up, twisting, pounding down on

25:14

the keys, desperately trying to create

25:16

enough volume to reach the people in the back

25:19

row. Jarrett really

25:21

had to play that piano very

25:23

hard to get enough volume to

25:25

get to the balconies. He was really pachoo

25:28

pushing the hoods down, standing

25:31

up, sitting down, moaning, writhing.

25:34

Jarrett didn't hold back in any

25:37

way as he pummeled the unplayable

25:39

piano to produce something

25:42

unique. That night became

25:45

legendary, the performance that made

25:47

Keith Jarrett's reputation. It

25:49

wasn't the music that he ever imagined playing,

25:52

but handed an impossible mess.

25:55

Jarrett soared, I never before

25:58

or after saw anybody so immersed

26:00

in his music. You could see it. He

26:02

was absolutely there. That

26:05

was how one member of the audience remembers

26:08

it. It's just as Brian Eno

26:10

said, what makes you alert

26:13

is to be faced with a situation that is

26:15

beyond your control. Jarrett

26:19

was having to play the piano in a different

26:21

style, from a different stance, remembering

26:23

to avoid certain faulty keys, and

26:26

all in front of the largest audience

26:28

he'd ever faced. You can bet

26:30

that he was alert, and you

26:32

can bet also that he was trying

26:35

something new, like a commuter

26:37

dealing with a transport strike who suddenly

26:39

discovers a fresh way to the office. Keith

26:42

Jarrett could have played the music he played

26:44

at Cologne on any piano, but

26:46

it was only when he was forced to deal with the limitations

26:49

of a bad piano that had occurred to

26:51

him to try. Usually,

26:55

we don't try unless something

26:58

forces us to. Maybe it's

27:00

a subway strike, maybe it's the

27:02

turn of an oblique strategist card, or

27:05

maybe it's a guilt trip from a

27:07

German teenager. You

27:17

might wonder why Keith Jarrett and Manfred

27:19

Iker even bothered to record the concert

27:22

when they expected it to be an embarrassment.

27:25

It's a fair question. Jarrett had told

27:27

Ika to send the recording engineers home,

27:29

what was the point, but Ika

27:31

argued that since they were there, they might as

27:33

well press record on the tape machine. Jarrett

27:36

later admitted the logic, we know what

27:39

we went through. We've paid

27:41

for the sound guys to come here, so why don't

27:43

we just let him record it and we'll have a tape

27:45

of it. That way, at least Iker

27:48

would have documentary evidence of what

27:50

a musical catastrophe sounds like.

27:53

But he didn't get a catastrophe.

27:56

He got a masterpiece. The

27:58

recording was released as The Coln Concert.

28:01

It's the best selling piano album in

28:03

history, and the best selling solo jazz

28:05

album too. There's something very

28:08

special about it. My wife asked

28:10

me to put the music on while she was in labor, not

28:13

once, but twice, and it's

28:15

so good that, even after that rather painful

28:17

association, we both still

28:19

love listening. Yet it's

28:22

so nearly never happened. If

28:25

Vera Branders hadn't begged, if

28:27

Keith Jarrett hadn't felt pity for that bedraggled

28:30

teenage girl, he certainly would

28:32

never have chosen to play on a piano like that.

28:36

Vera Branders wasn't credited on that

28:38

blockbuster album, she never got

28:40

a penny of royalties, and in

28:42

a way that's fair enough. Concert

28:45

promoters aren't artists.

28:47

And yet I have no doubt that

28:49

the Colman Concert would never have been

28:52

such a special piece of music. Without

28:54

Vera Branders and her unplayable

28:57

piano, all of us from

28:59

time to time have to deal with our

29:01

own unplayable pianos. When

29:04

that happens, we need to sit down

29:07

and try to play.

29:17

You've been listening to Cautionary Tales,

29:19

and if you liked this particular episode,

29:22

I wrote a book about these ideas. It's

29:24

called MESSI you might like it.

29:27

Cautionary Tales is written and presented

29:30

by me Tim Harford. Our producers

29:32

are Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust.

29:35

The sound designer and mixer was Pascal

29:37

Wise, who also composed the

29:39

amazing music. This

29:43

season stars Alan Cumming, Archie

29:45

Panjabi, Toby Stephens and Russell

29:48

Tovey, with enso Celenti, Ed

29:50

Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, mass

29:52

Siam Unroe, Rufus Wright and

29:55

introducing Malcolm Gladwell.

29:58

Thanks to the team at Pushkin Industries,

30:01

Julia Barton, Heather Faine, Mia

30:03

LaBelle, Carlie Milliori, Jacob

30:05

Weisberg and of course the mighty

30:08

Malcolm gladwe And thanks to my colleagues

30:11

at the Financial Times