This album is a classic piece of mid-’50s Cool jazz, the relaxed style that was marketed as an alternative to the more fiery bebop around this time. Marsh’s dark, snaking tenor sound complemented Konitz’s alto perfectly, and the pair would record together a number of times over the years. Tristano’s other star pupil was the saxophonist Warne Marsh. During this period his playing is extremely technically impressive, with long, elaborate phrases and sudden startling flights into the alto’s upper register. Konitz, his sound cool and dry, is on virtuosic form here. That said, this 1954 live quartet date finds him still very much in Tristano-influenced territory, with the pianist’s “Ablution” – a line over “All the Things You Are” on the setlist.Įnglishman Ronnie Ball, another student of Tristano, is at the piano, while Al Levitt and Percy Heath make up the rhythm section on drums and bass respectively. This spirit of openness and adventure would remain, and he would take gigs with many of the people who asked him to play with them over the years, working regularly with pick-up rhythm sections he never hustled for work himself.
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Konitz was certainly not lacking in artistic integrity, but he was keen to play with lots of different musicians (in addition to having a family to support), and in the early ‘50s he toured and recorded extensively with Stan Kenton’s big band, a career move which other Tristano students were apparently disapproving of.
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Lennie Tristano was famously protective of his disciples, preferring them to play with other students of his method and discouraging them from any sort of broad-minded or commercial approach to music. This challenging and rather cerebral music must have sounded incredibly futuristic when it was first released. Tristano himself features on five tracks, along with other members of his community of students, including tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh, pianist Sal Mosca and guitarist Billy Bauer.Ī number of the tunes are complex new melodies written over the chord changes of standard songs: the title track, by Konitz, is based upon Cole Porter’s jazz standard “What is this Thing Called Love?” while Marsh’s tricky “Marshmallow” takes Ray Noble’s “Cherokee” as its starting point. Subconscious-Lee brings together takes from four sessions recorded in 19. Tristano encouraged his students to sing classic solos by Lester Young, Roy Eldridge and Charlie Christian, and to aspire to improvise “purely” without relying on preconceived “licks” or phrases. Lee Konitz had also been studying with Lennie Tristano, a blind pianist and something of a mysterious guru figure. Konitz would soon take the alto chair in Miles Davis’ influential Birth of the Cool nonet, of which Evans and Mulligan were also members.
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Konitz was born in Chicago in 1927 to Jewish immigrant parents: his mother was Russian, his father from Austria.Īfter hearing big band jazz and swing on the radio, he began learning the saxophone and clarinet as a child, playing his first professional gigs in the mid-1940s whilst still a teenager.īy the age of 20 he was a member of Claude Thornhill’s forward-thinking orchestra, for whom Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan both provided arrangements. Still, we hope you enjoy this closer look at a selection of what might be considered some of his most significant records: ten albums, in chronological order, which tell the story of Konitz’s wonderful life in music. In the early part of his career the alto saxophonist was a disciple of the strict teaching method of Lennie Tristano and was associated with the so-called Cool jazz scene that emerged in the early 1950s.īut Konitz forged a sound and professional path that were all his own, recording and performing with an incredibly diverse range of collaborators over the course of a career that spanned more than seven decades.Ĭhoosing ten items from Konitz’s discography certainly isn’t easy: he recorded well over 100 discs as leader or co-leader, and that’s before we even get started on his contributions to dozens more as a sideman, including classic albums by the likes of Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Kenny Wheeler. With a relentless commitment to “pure” improvisation, Lee Konitz was one of the most distinctive voices in jazz. Join us as we take a look and listen to one of the most original and influential alto saxophonists in jazz history: American great Lee Konitz.