The Celestial Hawk: For Orchestra, Percussion and Piano is an album of contemporary classical music by Keith Jarrett recorded at Carnegie Hall with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christopher Keene, on March 22, 1980 and released on ECM November that same year.
[8] In an article for Between Sound and Space, Tyran Grillo wrote: "Despite being very programmatic, this music is far more than incidental to the narrative it describes.
At times tumbling in billowy romance, at others even jarringly uncomfortable, Jarrett's piano embraces itself, following the orchestral advice that surrounds it to the letter.
"[11] Jarrett biographer Ian Carr commented: "considering it is his first major orchestral piece, the writing is astonishingly assured, there is a discernible inner logic, and a fluidity in some of the scoring so fine that it seems to have the spontaneity of improvisation.
There are strong non-Western elements, ostinato patterns and percussive figures... which recall gamelan music, but Jarrett seems to write equally well for all sections of the orchestra..." Carr also noted that a number of critics "were puzzled as to whether the piece was a piano concerto or a symphony, and found themselves unable to classify it...