Lennie Tristano
Encyclopedia
Leonard Joseph Tristano was a jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and teacher of jazz improvisation
Jazz improvisation
Jazz improvisation is an important aspect of jazz. Basically, improvisation is composing on the spot and coming up with melodies off the top of one's head. Traditionally, jazz improvisation was distinguished from other forms of music improvisation by its chordal complexity, often exhibiting ii V...

. He performed in the cool jazz
Cool jazz
Cool is a style of modern jazz music that arose following the Second World War. It is characterized by its relaxed tempos and lighter tone, in contrast to the bebop style that preceded it...

, bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...

, post bop and avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which ...

 genres. He remains a somewhat overlooked figure in jazz history, but his enormous originality and dazzling work as an improviser have long been appreciated by knowledgeable jazz fans. In addition, his work as a jazz educator meant that he has exerted a substantial influence on jazz through figures such as Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz is an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist born in Chicago, Illinois.Generally considered one of the driving forces of Cool Jazz, Konitz has also performed successfully in bebop and avant-garde settings...

 and Bill Evans
Bill Evans
William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...

.

Life

Tristano was born in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 into an Italian immigrant family from Aversa
Aversa
Aversa is a town and comune in the Province of Caserta in Campania southern Italy, about 15 kilometres north of Naples. It is the centre of an agricultural district, the agro aversano, producing wine and cheese...

. He was blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...

 from infancy and studied piano and music theory from pre-teen years, graduating from his home town's American Conservatory of Music
American Conservatory of Music
The American Conservatory of Music was a major American school of music founded in 1886 by John James Hattstaedt . The conservatory was incorporated as an Illinois non-profit corporation. It was located in Chicago until 1991 when its Board of Trustees — chaired by Frederic Wilbur Hickman...

 in 1943.

Tristano's interest in jazz inspired a move to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in 1946. His advanced grasp of harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

 pushed his music beyond even the complexities of the contemporary bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...

 movement, though Tristano was always explicit about acknowledging his enormous debt to Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....

 and Bud Powell
Bud Powell
Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell was an American Jazz pianist. Powell has been described as one of "the two most significant pianists of the style of modern jazz that came to be known as bop", the other being his friend and contemporary Thelonious Monk...

. Other key ingredients in his style were Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...

 and Art Tatum
Art Tatum
Arthur "Art" Tatum, Jr. was an American jazz pianist and virtuoso who played with phenomenal facility despite being nearly blind.Tatum is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time...

, influences most audible in his early drummerless trio recordings. Though he and his followers remained at something of a slant to mainstream bebop, Tristano did on occasion play and record with bebop's preeminent figures such as Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

 and Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....

, and Tristano was a pallbearer at Parker's funeral. Often the "Tristano school" has been contrasted with bebop, however, by being labelled "cool jazz", though this risks lumping his music in with unrelated styles like the West Coast cool jazz of the 1950s.

Recordings

Among Tristano's most important earlier recordings was a 1949 sextet session with his students, saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

 players Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz is an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist born in Chicago, Illinois.Generally considered one of the driving forces of Cool Jazz, Konitz has also performed successfully in bebop and avant-garde settings...

 and Warne Marsh
Warne Marsh
Warne Marion Marsh was an American tenor saxophonist born in Los Angeles.-Biography:Marsh came from an affluent background: his father was the cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh , and his mother Elizabeth was a violinist...

. After recording a number of conventionally structured compositions, Tristano had the group record "Intuition" and "Digression." Both pieces were completely improvised, with no prearranged melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

, harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

 or rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

. These two songs are often cited as the first recorded examples of free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...

 or free improvisation
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....

.

His 1953 recording Descent into the Maelstrom is especially significant: an experiment in overdubbing which in its harsh atonality anticipates the much later work of players like Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...

 and Borah Bergman
Borah Bergman
Borah Bergman is an American free jazz pianist.Bergman learned clarinet as a child, and did not commence studies on piano until adulthood. He developed his left hand playing to the point where he became essentially ambidextrous as a pianist, and can play equally fast in both hands...

 (who has specifically mentioned the piece as an important influence on his work).

Tristano released two important albums on Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...

, which remain his best-known work. Lennie Tristano
Lennie Tristano (album)
Lennie Tristano, also known as Tristano, is a 1956 album by bebop jazz pianist Lennie Tristano. At its release, the album was controversial for its innovative use of technology, with Tristano overdubbing piano and manipulating tape speed for effect on the first four tracks. The final five songs...

, from 1955, is famous for including innovative experiments with overdubbing ("Requiem" and "Turkish Mambo") and altered tape-speed ("Line Up" and "East 32nd"). The second side is a straightforward club gig in the company of Lee Konitz. "Requiem," a tribute to the late Charlie Parker, is notable for its deep blues feeling – a style not usually associated with Tristano. However, perhaps the most significant work lies in the composition "Line Up", a spiralling linear improvisation based on the changes to "All of Me
All of Me (song)
"All of Me" is a popular song and jazz standard written by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons in 1931.First performed by Belle Baker over the radio and recorded in December 1931 by Ruth Etting, it has become one of the most recorded songs of its era, with notable versions by Russ Columbo, Bing Crosby,...

".

The New Tristano (1962) remains a landmark in solo jazz piano. Though on this occasion no overdubbing was used, the music is just as densely conceived, especially the classic "G Minor Complex," an improvisation on the changes of "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To
You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To
"You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" is a popular song written by Cole Porter, for the 1943 film Something to Shout About, where it was introduced by Janet Blair and Don Ameche. Dinah Shore had a major hit with the song at the time of its introduction...

". Tristano's mimicking of a jazz bassist's accompaniment with his left hand on these recordings is distinctive and often imitated. The combination of this line with the dazzling line-spinning of his right hand also gives the music a contrapuntal flavour explicitly paying homage to Bach.

Tristano's distrust of jazz record labels and increasingly infrequent public performances meant that his recordings are comparatively scarce, and many of them are concert recordings of very variable fidelity. Some of his live performances were recorded and have been released, including those from the Half Note Club
Half Note Club
The Half Note was a jazz club located at 289 Hudson Street in New York City.The club was known for showcasing up-and-coming jazz musicians in the 1950s and 1960s, defraying its costs with live radio broadcasts on Friday nights, hosted by Alan Grant....

 in New York from the 1950s, and concerts in Europe from the 1960s. He was one of the first musicians to start his own record label, Jazz Records
Jazz Records
Jazz Records is a United States jazz record company specialising in the issue of previously unreleased recordings from the family archive of jazz pianist Lennie Tristano....

, which is still in existence and is run by his daughter, the drummer Carol Tristano. The label Inner City released a compilation of various Tristano recordings, Descent into the Maelstrom.

Teaching methods

By the mid-1950s, Tristano focused his energies more on music education
Music education
Music education is a field of study associated with the teaching and learning of music. It touches on all domains of learning, including the psychomotor domain , the cognitive domain , and, in particular and significant ways,the affective domain, including music appreciation and sensitivity...

. He can be regarded as one of the first jazz teachers to teach jazz in a structured way, beginning in the late 1940s and continuing to his death in 1978.

Tristano approached each student individually and hence lessons were structured to meet the needs of each individual; however, each student was challenged in ways that would allow the student to find and express their own musical feelings, or style.

Tristano would often have his students learn to sing and play the improvised solos
Solo (music)
In music, a solo is a piece or a section of a piece played or sung by a single performer...

 by some of best-known names in jazz, including Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

, Lester Young
Lester Young
Lester Willis Young , nicknamed "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He also played trumpet, violin, and drums....

, Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...

, Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....

 and Bud Powell
Bud Powell
Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell was an American Jazz pianist. Powell has been described as one of "the two most significant pianists of the style of modern jazz that came to be known as bop", the other being his friend and contemporary Thelonious Monk...

. Solos were often learned by first playing them along with the original recording, from a phonograph record or magnetic audio tape, at half the normal speed, hence the pitch would drop by one octave. Eventually the student would learn the solo at normal speed. Tristano stressed that the student was not learning to imitate the artist, but rather should use the experience to gain insight into the musical feeling conveyed by the artist.

One of the key teaching tools used by Tristano was the metronome
Metronome
A metronome is any device that produces regular, metrical ticks — settable in beats per minute. These ticks represent a fixed, regular aural pulse; some metronomes also include synchronized visual motion...

. In practicing fundamentals such as scales
Musical scale
In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...

, the student would set the metronome at or near to its slowest setting and play the scales and arpeggios in a legato
Legato
In musical notation the Italian word legato indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected. That is, in transitioning from note to note, there should be no intervening silence...

 fashion covering the full range of their instrument with very even dynamics. Developing a strong awareness of the beat
Beat (music)
The beat is the basic unit of time in music, the pulse of the mensural level . In popular use, the beat can refer to a variety of related concepts including: tempo, meter, rhythm and groove...

 was a key element of his teaching philosophy.

Influence

His innovative tutelage has inspired an eclectic group of artists: Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...

, Billy Joel
Billy Joel
William Martin "Billy" Joel is an American musician and pianist, singer-songwriter, and classical composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, according to...

, Bill Russo
William Russo (musician)
William Russo, better known as Bill Russo , was an American jazz musician. He is considered one of the greatest jazz composers and arrangers.-History:...

, Connie Crothers
Connie Crothers
Connie Crothers is a jazz pianist. She majored in music at the University of California, Berkeley before becoming a student of Lennie Tristano. After his death she became President of the Lennie Tristano Jazz Foundation...

, Lenny Popkin, Sal Mosca
Sal Mosca
Sal Mosca was an American jazz pianist who was a student of Lennie Tristano. Born in Mount Vernon, New York, Mosca worked in cool jazz and post-bop. He began working with Lee Konitz in 1949 and also worked with Warne Marsh. He spent much of his career teaching and was relatively inactive since...

, Liz Gorrill, Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...

, Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz is an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist born in Chicago, Illinois.Generally considered one of the driving forces of Cool Jazz, Konitz has also performed successfully in bebop and avant-garde settings...

, Warne Marsh
Warne Marsh
Warne Marion Marsh was an American tenor saxophonist born in Los Angeles.-Biography:Marsh came from an affluent background: his father was the cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh , and his mother Elizabeth was a violinist...

, Sheila Jordan
Sheila Jordan
Sheila Jordan is an American jazz singer and songwriter. Jordan has recorded as a session musician with an array of critically acclaimed artists in addition to a notable solo career....

, Bill Evans
Bill Evans
William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...

, Woody Mann
Woody Mann
-Biography:Mann specializes in jazz, blues, and American roots music.He was born in New York, where he first studied acoustic guitar with ragtime and blues guitarist Reverend Gary Davis from 1968-72. From 1973-78, Mann continued private lessons, focusing on improvisation with jazz pianist Lennie...

, Billy Bauer
Billy Bauer
Billy Bauer was an American cool jazz guitarist.-Life:Bauer was born in New York City. He played banjo as a child before switching to guitar...

, Fran Canisius, Betty Scott, Gary Foster, Jeff Morton, Willie Dennis
Willie Dennis
Willie Dennis was an American jazz trombonist known as a big band musician but was also an influential bebop soloist...

, Jerry Tilitz, Don Ferrara, Ronnie Ball
Ronnie Ball
Ronald "Ronnie" Ball was a jazz pianist born in Birmingham, England.Ball moved to London in 1948, and in the early 1950s he worked both as a bandleader and under Ronnie Scott, Tony Kinsey, Victor Feldman, and Harry Klein...

, Peter Ind
Peter Ind
Peter Ind is a British jazz double-bassist and record producer.Ind began playing professionally in the late 1940s, including being part of the 'house band' on the ship Queen Mary from 1949 to 1951. He relocated to New York City in 1951, where he played with Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz , Buddy...

, Jimmy Halperin, Billy Lester, Alan Broadbent
Alan Broadbent
Alan Broadbent, MNZM , is a jazz pianist, arranger and composer best known for his work with artists such as Woody Herman, Diane Schuur, Chet Baker, Irene Kral, Sheila Jordan, Charlie Haden, Warne Marsh, Bud Shank, and many others.Broadbent studied piano and music theory in his own country, but in...

, Mark Turner
Mark Turner
Mark Turner may refer to:*Mark Turner *Mark Turner *Mark Turner *Mark Turner *Mark Turner , jazz saxophonist...

, rock guitarist Joe Satriani
Joe Satriani
Joseph "Joe" Satriani is an American instrumental rock guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, with multiple Grammy Award nominations...

, Keith Emerson
Keith Emerson
Keith Noel Emerson is an English keyboard player and composer. Formerly a member of the Keith Emerson Trio, John Brown's Bodies, The T-Bones, V.I.P.s, P.P. Arnold's backing band, and The Nice , he was a founder of Emerson, Lake & Palmer , one of the early supergroups, in 1970...

, and even Franciscan priest/rapper Fr. Stan Fortuna.

A book by bassist Peter Ind
Peter Ind
Peter Ind is a British jazz double-bassist and record producer.Ind began playing professionally in the late 1940s, including being part of the 'house band' on the ship Queen Mary from 1949 to 1951. He relocated to New York City in 1951, where he played with Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz , Buddy...

, Jazz Visions: Lennie Tristano and His Legacy, was released in October 2005. The book documents and discusses Tristano's contributions to jazz music.

Compositions

Lennie Tristano's compositions include "Retrospection", "Line Up", "317 East 32nd", "Requiem", "Turkish Mambo", "Dissonance", "New Sound", "Wow", "Judy", "Crosscurrent", "Ju-Ju", "Passtime", "April", "Lennie's Pennies", "Parallel", "Abstraction", "Coolin' Off With Ulanov", "Freedom", and "Resemblance".

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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