Word: tristano
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Konitz stopped playing--leaving a couple of notes hanging in mid-air. He pulled up the microphone and spoke: "We're going to play something I wrote with Lennie Tristano called . . . I'm sorry, I don't think we gave it a name...
Classical Drill. Says Tristano: "Our harmonies are strongly impressionistic. Melodically, I've tried to go beyond bop, which adheres largely to the given harmonic structure; we don't restrict ourselves to the chord when we play melody. Our rhythms are superimposed one on the other. Sometimes I play three different rhythms at once, while the other boys are each playing separate ones." The main idea: every man for himself...
...Tristano, a Chicago boy, started improvising on the piano at four. His parents saw to it that he got formal lessons, but no one was impressed by Lennie's classical drill work, least of all Lennie. His eyes, weak at birth, became completely sightless after a bout with measles when he was ten. Lennie developed his musical ear in a school for the blind, graduated to Chicago's American Conservatory, where he took his B. Mus. "They thought my string quartet was 'refreshing,' " he says. "If they'd known it was really jazz, they...
Soundproofed Walls. After playing "commercial" jazz in Chicago clubs, Tristano moved to Manhattan, got a few jobs, soon began teaching. It was after bebop came along, in the early '40s, that Tristano's new ideas took form. He made a few recordings for Capitol; none sold more than a few thousand copies, but Lennie's name got around. Some records reached hep listeners in Europe, where he is now an advance-guard favorite...
...fans write glowing letters to him from all over the world. One fan who did more than write: Phyllis Pinkerton, 26, who came from Wisconsin to study with Lennie. When she inherited $10,000 recently, she invested it in Tristano, who rented a loft over an old garage, soundproofed the walls, installed recording equipment and a piano. There Tristano and members of his sextet teach some 35 pupils, will soon begin recording on their own label...