The Tristano school

[Jazzrook]

I was astonished to hear this track recently. Recorded three years before Cecil Taylor's recording debut in 1956!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4fNXylop2w

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

http://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/111569521032/lennie-tristano-descent-into-the-maelstrom-jazz

reviews the album of renewed/unreleased material which i have just scored on emusic .... many thanks for the pointer jazzrook!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=G6dQHdBfkmg

[charles t]

Rookster & Calumnite:

Living in Chicago, I was told an apocryphal story by someone who knew Lee Konitz who told how, while at an early age, Konitz and friend(s) put Lenny behind the wheel of a car and would issue (driving) instructions:

'TURN LEFT

TURN RIGHT'

etc.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Charles T ... and they lived to tell a tale or two eh ....

i am getting into Ms Crothers

and at

http://newartistsrecordstv.com/

for a stash of free to view material

[Ian Thumwood]

I was playing the solo Tristano album on Atlantic in my car the other week and the track "C minor complex" always blows my mind whenever I hear it. You can sense the stamina necessary to perform this composition and Tristano seems almost expended before he crosses the line with the cadenza at the end. It is a great album although nothing else on it matches this track. A lot of the tunes are contra-facts, one in fact being a variation on "Donna Lee" which is itself built upon "Indiana."

Tristano remains a compelling and fascinating figure and if you read the Lee Konitz and Andy Hamilton book called "Conversations on the improviser's art", you get a fantastic insight in to the mechanics of this music. (It also gets the thumbs up in the review section from fellow saxophonist Fred Hess on amazon!) Part of me of fascinated by this approach which almost distils jazz in to technical exercises akin to Bach fugues. I don't believe that jazz theory was ever the same after Tristano's approach and the practical nature of looking a starting phrases from different beats and extending them for different lengths of measures offered a more analytical assessment for progression than Charlie Parker. A lot of "new" ideas in jazz seem to stem from this kind of analysis even right up to the likes of Braxton.

What is bizarre is that Tristano's music is that it has become almost beyond criticism and, for all the innovation and widening of the practical possibilities of jazz, it did come at an expense. Perhaps the biggest criticism is lack of emotion or the limited field of expression within which emotion is allowed to manifest itself. Listening to a Tristano school player is not the same as listening to Parker or Coltrane and it totally lacks the romanticism of Keith Jarrett whose solo piano playing almost offers an alternative way of spontaneous improvisation. The biggest draw back is the lack of rhythmic variety but it is also hugely dependant upon the standard repertoire for inspiration. The Konitz interview book is brilliant in picking up how to really get to grips with the structure of a tune and , for me, the interviews are proof that LK is as important an improviser as someone like Sonny Rollins. The notion of playing licks is frowned upon and Konitz is incisive in identifying those musicians he considers to be genuine improvisers as opposed to those who fall back on stock phrases.

The other draw back is that some players like Warne Marsh expose themselves in a very honest fashion when they perform. Marsh is a fascinating player but the groups you hear with him on are often pick-ups groups with sympathetic musicians. The playing can be a bit rugged and the solos ramble on in their interpretation of the structure. I quite like the "heart on the sleeve" approach and feel Konitz and Marsh are far more interesting as soloists than many of their contemporaries.

Reading Konitz' account of Tristano it is really easy to be seduced by the analytical approach to improvisation and how the mechanics can be put together and even re-assembled. The Tristano school is almost like a Haynes guide to playing jazz. It is a jazz tool kit. I like both the idea of Tristano's approach and the music it generated but I am glad that it was an interesting off-shoot and not something that dominated the jazz that followed to the exclusion of all possibilities. Today I've been player the exceptional William Parker Quartet album "O'Neal's Porch" which is a scorching free-bop session akin to someone successfully roller skating along a tightrope. this is music that threatens to collapse yet consistently and resolutely remains on course, the music taking all streams of possibilities as well as emotions and leaving no corner unturned in it's exploration of the leader's theme. It is a nice reminder that the Tristano way to improvisational freedom was but one course.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

amongst other subjects Richard Williams offers an interesting side light on Tristano from Philip Glass

[Ian Thumwood]

I can appreciate the link between Tristano and Glass as they are both interested in the mechanics of the music such as patterns and how phrases might start from any particular beat. The review of the Tristano material also picks up on the fact that Tristano relied heavily on the structures of popular songs as vehicles to base his ideas. I think that Bach is a more apparent influence (especially on something like "C minor complex.")

It is interesting to consider the more cerebral aspects in jazz and , for my money, the fact that Tristano wasn't startlingly original in what he was proposing with either harmony, form or rhythm but concentrated on more fundamental components of "normal" jazz to a far more in depth manner than any one before and few since marks him out as being more relevant and more successful than the likes of George Russell (relatively unexplored these days and, in my view, ripe for re-discovery) or wholly esoteric musicians like Braxton.

I'd also add that I think far more musicians are in to this kind of "cerebral " jazz than you might suspect. The recent Jimmy Heath book details his study of the Schillinger system (still trying to work out what that actually is) and there is a comment about how any note can be demonstrated to belong to any chord - a fact that Wynton Marsalis is credited as stating as being the most important piece of musical theory he was taught. Even Bud Freeman wanted to study with Tristano and I feel that the whole idea of a "Tristano school" had far more appeal that within the cliquey coterie of his more famous adherents.

[Jazzrook]

Another disciple of the "Tristano school" is the little-known tenor saxophonist Lenny Popkin. I was bowled over recently by his live 1979 trio album '317 East 32nd'(CHOICE CHCD 71027).
The inventive and exhilarating jazz is given a wildly enthusiastic response from the New York audience.
An album that deserves to be much better known.

http://news.allaboutjazz.com/lenny-popkin-317-east-32nd-choice.php

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

ta for that name jazzrook

it reminded me of this:




{see the New Artists Records link above]

[Serial_Apologist]

I once knew a one-time girlfriend of Bruce Turner, another Tristano pupil. "A real gentleman, he was, always" she told me; "Let me sleep in his bed after a party once. No - he slept on the floor. A Communist, he was, but he never rammed it down your throat. Always the gentleman, as I was saying. Always called me and everyone else 'Dad'".

[Jazzrook]

"A trailblazing teacher and pianist, Chicago-born Lennie Tristano(1919-78) influenced the likes of Bill Evans and Charles Mingus, while creating coolly radical music of his own. Geoffrey Smith salutes a unique free-jazz pioneer".

Geoffrey Smith's Jazz ~ Saturday, April 25 at midnight.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

[Tenor Freak]

Wish I'd gone there instead of Isleworth & Syon.