Spirits

Lee Konitz | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 20, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Ojc
• ASIN: B00000JQKO
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #205,369 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Two Tristanoites reunited, January 20, 2000

By 

N. Dorward "obsessive reviewer" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spirits (Audio CD)

This album reunites Konitz with the pianist Sal Mosca. Mosca is a puritan in terms of his playing: its adherence to Tristano's idiom is absolute; Konitz, on the other hand, had long since left behind his early style of playing, & here, while he touches on it, his sound is often pungent (close to Anthony Braxton in spots), his lines canny & unorthodox. Half of the album is duets with Mosca; the other half has the rhythm section of Ron Carter and Mousie Alexander.

Hard to know what to say about this album: it's of course like anything of Konitz's worth the closest attention. I'm rather less enamoured of Mosca here: first, because the piano he's been given is pretty ugly-sounding (did they _tune_ it before the session?); secondly because he often tends to sound simply dour where Tristano himself would be electrifying.

Certainly worth a listen; maybe not quite as remarkable as the personnel listing might suggest.

3.0 out of 5 stars Half superb, half just bearable., December 28, 2010

By 

G. Coppens "George Coppens" (Amsterdam, Netherlands) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spirits (Audio CD)

Half of this album is superb: the duets of Konitz and Mosca, the other half, the quartets are uninspired and almost instantly forgettable. How to rate such an album? Five stars for the duets, two for the quartets.

2.0 out of 5 stars What a drag, man, November 18, 2010

By 

Matthew Watters (Vietnam) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spirits (Audio CD)

I have to throw my vote in behind the "obsessive reviewer", whose criticisms of this album are spot-on. Sal Mosca, despite a legend burnished by reclusiveness, couldn't touch the hem of Lennie Tristano's robes, never once achieving the almost levitating quality that Tristano always did when soloing on this material. There's none of the exhilarating uplift. Indeed, this only gets an extra star for Konitz, whose probity is undiminished. But he's pulling all the weight here, and it's heavy work.