Lennie Tristano was a little known talented jazz pianist who was around during the Bebop, Hard Bop and Avant-Garde eras. As to the jazz community and especially jazz musicians, he was a legend! Two songs “Intuition” and “Digression” from his 1949 album “Intuition” are considered to be the first recordings of the “Free Jazz” style. Take some time to read the album description and his biography below to its entirety and devote an other hour or so to learn how much influence he had to the development of jazz. Listen and enjoy this album, “Continuity,” while doing so.
About the album:
These valuable recordings document the great pianist Lennie Tristano during his later years, when public appearances were rare and recordings only an infrequent event. Tristano is heard playing at the Half Note on two separate occasions. Warne Marsh is on tenor, altoist Lee Konitz is a major asset to the selections from 1964, and the rhythm sections include either Henry Grimes or Sonny Dallas on bass and Paul Motian or Nick Stabulas on drums……..Read More
Biography of Lennie Tristano:
The history of jazz is written as a recounting of the lives of its most famous (and presumably, most influential) artists. Reality is not so simple, however. Certainly the very most important of the music’s innovators are those whose names are known by all — Armstrong, Parker, Young, Coltrane. Unfortunately, the jazz critic’s tendency to inflate the major figures’ status often comes at the expense of other musicians’ reputations — men and women who have made significant, even essential, contributions of their own, are, for whatever reason, overlooked in the mad rush to canonize a select few. Lennie Tristano is one of those who have not yet received their critical due. In the mid-’40s, the Chicago-born pianist arrived on the scene with a concept that genuinely expanded the prevailing bop aesthetic. Tristano brought to the music of Charlie Parker and Bud Powell a harmonic language that adapted the practices of contemporary classical music; his use of polytonal effects in tunes like….Read More
