Customer Reviews

Intuition

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Tristano was a musician more talked about than listened to during his heyday. But he was way ahead of his time...really music hasn't truly caught up with him (as it hasn't really caught up with any of the great innovators.) This album contains all of Tristano's classic 1949 sides recorded for Capitol with his sextet. On the surface, this stuff sounds like bop...but listen closely, it is really another world.

Most of the tunes are based on traditional chord changes, like bop heads. But the heads are more intricate, requiring more arrangement, sometimes quite complex arrangement. Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz are terrific in their solos. Both show a penchant for long winding lines that explore the farthest reaches of the chord changes, and an approach to rhythm that is both smooth and angular at the same time. The phrasing is quick and light, but the accents of the lines reach accross the time signatures.

Tristano is a wonder. He was the master of the impossibly long line...melodic material spins out from his fingers in seemingly endless streams. Tristano is all about invention. He doesn't seem to have any licks at all. You never know where line will end up. It is endlessly inventive and exciting playing. And his harmonic structure is nearly Scriabinesque.

The revolutionary cuts from this period are Intuition and Digression. Both are examples of completely free playing, something that Tristano'sgroups had been experimenting with for many years in their live gigs. This is not the kind of free playing that you would hear from the great avant-gardists of the 60's. Rather, it is full of feeling, but not emotive...exploratory but not dissonant for dissonance's sake. The players form an almost telepathic bond, with motives and phrases past around from member to member. The freedom, which is intense, never descends into chaos, as it could in the worst examples of the New York energy school. And Tristano, like Cecil Taylor after him, directs everything from the keyboard. These are experiments, but ones that every musician should hear. Close study of Tristano would put alot of energy back into the worn out "New Traditionalist" movement in jazz.

The Warne Marsh cuts from the late 50s initially disappointed me, partly because I hadn't looked carefully at the cover info, and I was expecting all Tristano. Compared to the adventurousness of the 1949 cuts, the Marsh sides sound like alot of other "West Coast School" jazz albums. But that's just a superficial reading of the recordings. More careful listening shows that Marsh really profitted from his time in New York with Tristano. His lines are still exploratory and "out" in a way that Chet Baker and even Gerry Mulligan never really approached. Marsh may have been one of the more underrated tenor players of the 50's. This set swings, but repays careful listening as well.

tThe remastering of the sides is terrific. They both sound much more modern than their dates would suggest...the Tristano sides sound cleaner than I've ever heard them, even on vinyl!

So get this disc for the Tristano sides, they are classic. But the Marsh sides are worth a listen too. You owe it to yourself to listen to these searching musicians. They will expand your appreciation of the art form of jazz.

Years ago as a high school student, one evening after midnight, I turned on my bedside radio and came upon radio station WJZ from New York. The DJ was Symphony Sid Torin who played jazz from midnight to five A.M. That was the first time heard WOW which appears on this CD. That tune got me hooked on the players of the Tristano school. The music was entirely different than what was happening at the time and remains so today. This music sounds as fresh today as the day it was recorded. All tunes except Digression and Intuition which are the first recorded attempts at free form playing, are based on the chord progressions of standard tunes. Marionette is September in the rain, Sax of a kind is on the Fine and Dandy changes and so forth. The Warne Marsh Quintet recordings originally released in mono as Jazz of Two Cities and stereo as The Winds of Marsh, are a lot looser and more swinging. Every selection in this CD has stood the test of time. I had the 78rpm copies of the Tristano material, later on LP, and also the Warne Marsh LP. The Warne Marsh tracks also feature tenor saxophonist Ted Brown who I believe to be the freshest improviser in jazz today. Two fine examples of Ted's more current playing can be heard on the Lee Konitz CD called Figure and Spirit and Ted's own date for Criss Cross called Free Spirit. Don't miss hearing it.

Before buying this wonderful CD, I had read that Lennie Tristano was an under-appreciated musical genius. After buying it, I understand that he was a genius and needs to be listened to by more people. I can't believe that Tristano was making music like this in the late '40s. It is complex, but beautiful. The song "Yesterdays" is a flowing melody between piano and guitar that is one of the prettiest pieces of music I have ever heard. I sincerely hope that more music enthusiasts will introduce themselves to Lennie Tristano.

By the way, the Warne Marsh tracks are almost as beautiful. Buy this music!!!

If not for listomania and the people who have chosen this cd as one of their favorites; as well as giving it glowing reviews, I never would have found it. I've never heard of Lennie Tristano in my life, but after finding this cd on Amazon I thought that I would give it a try. You can tell by my rating that I was very pleased with the results. Thanks again, everyone who recommended this one to me. I never would have discovered it without you guys.

This is an essential document in the development of jazz. Of particular interest are the 2 concluding tracks recorded in 1949 : Intuition and Digression. They were among the first experiments in free form jazz and show considerable harmonic adventurism with obvious links to developments 20 th century classical music. In that sense, they follow a direction set a little earlier eg Artie Shaw's recordings with string quartets in 1946.
Most of the CD includes later recordings with Lee Konitz and others. Again these are most interesting.

The easiest answer - yes to all three - is probably also the most correct. The tracks from the 1949 sessions with Lennie Tristano are mainline be-bop for sure, but Tristano nudges himself and tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh into grooves that could only flow toward the future, toward "free jazz" a decade later. Tristano wasn't there, on the West Coast with Warne Marsh in the sessions of the 1950s, but even within the more relaxed cool-jazz favored in LA, Tristano's intelligence can be heard in the modulations, in what classical music fans would call "development". Warne Marsh had "cool' in his DNA, of course. So did Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan. The 'soul' you hear in their music is detached, ironic, cool as champagne on ice. Marsh was one of the constellation of jazz stars on the tenor sax of his generation, along with Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray ....

.... and if you appreciate serious, instinctual, intelligent jazz, you'll want to hear Marsh try his best to 'live up' to the sublime Lennie Tristano.

After falling in love with The Cool (Chet Baker, Mulligan, Miles, McCoy Tyner and others) I was searching for new names. BINGO. This recording is up there with the best of the them. Buy this if you're wondering if anything will ever approach birth of the cool....