Lennie Tristano born 19 March 1919

Leonard Joseph Tristano (19 March 1919 - 18 November 1978) was a jazz pianist, composer  and teacher of jazz improvisation. He performed in the cool jazz, bebop, post bop and avant-garde jazz 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 and Bill Evans.

Tristano was born in Chicago. He was born with weak sight, but became completely blind by age ten. Both of his parents emigrated from Italy, and his mother, a pianist and opera singer, taught him music. At a Chicago school for the blind, Tristano studied clarinet, cello, and saxophone as well as the piano.

He graduated from Chicago’s American Conservatory of Music in 1943, and quickly established himself as a teacher and performer. There he met alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and Bill Russo, a trumpeter and arranger, both of whom became students and proponents of what would later be called ‘The Tristano School’ of jazz. He married singer Judy Moore on July 27th, 1945. In 1946, the Tristanos moved to Freeport, Long Island. Lennie established a trio with a bassist and guitar player, and it was not long before he was performing with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. The jazz critic Barry Ulanov promoted Tristano’s playing through his writings in Metronome magazine, which gave Lennie its Musician of the Year award in 1947.

Tristano’s approach to jazz was unusual in its day. Rooted in the vocabularies of swing and bebop, it strove for a harmonic complexity that owed as much to Stravinsky and other twentieth-century classical composers as it did to Ellington and Parker. His linear solos suggested the contrapuntal nature of Bach, while his harmonic and rhythmic ideas were consistent with bebop but took its conceptions even further.

In 1949 Tristano formed a sextet with Konitz, guitarist Billy Bauer, and tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh. Their recordings encapsulate Tristano’s signature style in their long flowing lines, odd rhythms, and musical counterpoint. 

                              

This group recorded two pieces, ‘Intuition,’and ‘Digression,’ that were both fully improvised, with no pre-laid musical structure. Ten years later, saxophonist Ornette Coleman adopted this approach and was heralded by many as the inventor of “free jazz,” but Tristano’s group did it first.

Tristano continued to perform and record in New York City, and set up his school in a loft at 317 East Thirty-Second Street. The topics of study included ear training, harmony and technique. Tristano encouraged students to sing along with the recorded jazz solos of master improvisers like Parker and tenor saxophonist Lester Young. Tristano’s systematic approach to teaching jazz influenced other schools, such as the Lenox School and the Berklee School of Music, whose curricula later spread to jazz schools throughout the world.

Tristano also built a recording studio in his loft, where he experimented with overdubbing on his compositions ‘Ju-Ju’ and ‘Pastime’. He recorded his trio with Peter Ind on bass and Roy Haynes on drums, and then overdubbed a second piano part.

In 1955, Tristano made some of his most important recordings. Ind and drummer Jeff Morton recorded several choruses of the chord changes to the standard ‘All Of Me,’ and Tristano overdubbed his piano solo. This track, ‘Line Up’, became his best-known performance.

He closed the studio in 1956, and moved his school to a house in Hollis, Queens, where he set up shop after his separation from Judy. His public performances dwindled off, but in 1958 he began what would become a long-term engagement at the Half Note. In 1961 he recorded a solo piano album, ‘The New Tristano’. It included a disclaimer that no overdubbing was used in the recording process. His harmonic and rhythmic approaches grew more advanced, as evidenced on ‘C minor Complex’ and the standard ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’.

In 1964, Tristano reunited with Konitz and Marsh for an extended engagement at the Half Note. The next year he departed for a solo piano tour of Europe, which yielded several solo and trio recordings. He recorded with vocalist Betty Scott in 1965, 1971, and 1974, but stayed away from performing for the most part, concentrating on teaching. He gave private concerts at his home, mostly to his students and friends.

He suffered from emphysema, caused by a lifetime of smoking unfiltered cigarettes. He also developed chronic bronchitis, and these conditions lead to his death from a heart attack on November 18th, 1978.  (Edited mainly from Jazz.com)