Tristano's Music

Tristano's Music These three visionary artists offered music to the small public. Byzantine melodci lines, attenuated rhythms, acerbic harmonies. Thelonious Monk, the most admired Jazz composer ofthe postwar ear wrote only single chorus instrumental Melodies while the extended oks of such later players as john coltrane and Ornette Coleman are unrelated to the classical music tradition. Blind virtuoso focused on omplex linear improvisation that utilized polyrhythmic and poly tonal concepts. Using only a relatively few standard songs as a harmonic basis, he composed many striking pieces that sound like spontaneosus solos. Sacrificing the convetional concept o the swinging rhythm section, he inited on a near metronomic , almost faceless bass and drum accompaniment The music of the men who gathered round Lennie Tristano in the mid 1940's (develepemnt of jazz avant garde because 'Intuition' and 'Digression' free jazz performances Tristano -like (free improvisation 'Abstract No.1) - structural concepts The deeper significance of Tristano's music lies in 2 directions, first, that tristano transforms jazz historical self consciousness into a rationale for making a new kind of music second he and his disciples focus on jazz rhythms Tristano's Rhythmic approach involved superimposing layers of poly rhythms onto the 4/4 pulse in order to free up the placing of accens nd generate microsubivisions of the beat, as though the oal were to travel by other means o the place of charlie parker i.e. 'Line up', 'C minor Complex' His phrasing across the bar lines, his superimposition of elaborate poly rhythms over the ground beat, his biting percussiveness, his splintered harmonic structures Tristano experimented with atonality, total improvisation, overdubbing and other unsuaul devices, however Gioia argues that his mucis had little to do with pared-down melody lines, the warm lyricism, the relaxed tempos, and chamber music delicacy that characterised the 'Cool' idiom. Schuller makes the linke that Tristano was in fact a linke to Swing musicians such as Art Tatum and Mel Powelll.... seems far fetched His Keynote label ; the famous block chord style, built on dense harmonic structures, and a more dirinv linear style in a bop vein The most dissonance out of a jazz recording in the mid 1940's was ' Atonement' and 'I can't get started' - from Tristano's 1946-47 Keynote - notice the elongated phrases was equally pathbreaking. One hears strong hints of Powell and Parker too... within his melodic constructions, Tristano was even more readical than his contemporaries, in his phrasing accross the bar lines. The underlying 4/4 pulse is almost totally obliterated in these linear improvisations hidden under arcane superstructures of melody and rhythm. Tristiano Anticipated the evolution of free jazz with his jarringly atonal work 'Descent into the MAelstrom' 'Line up' and Turkish Mambo' invovlved overdubbing and tape manipulation. His Music stands apart from the tradition of modern jazz; a alternative to bop, which poses severe demands of ensemble precision intellectual rigor and instrumenta virtuoisity. Rather than the irregular cross accents of Bop, Tristano preferred an even rhythmic background against which he concentrated on linear melody (focuses on Complex changes of Time Signature). His Solos consisted of Long anglular strings, almost even eigth notes provided with subtle rhythmic deviations and abrasive poly tonal effects. A master of the block chord style of Goergie Shearing, adept in his use of different levels of double time. Carefully gauging the accumulation of dissonances. His experiements in multitrak recording and overdubbing, beginning in 1951 with Ju-Ju inspired similar performances with Bill Evans. In his groups he explored free collective improvisation. - Intutation and Digresion (1949) My impression was also less than objective. It was not always easy to accompany Lennie. His complexity of rhythm - superimposed on the standard 4/4 jazz beat - challenged rhythm secions of the day. The temptation was not to listen to what he was doing and instead to pound away, bass and drums together, to maintain the beat. But such an approach was far from satisfactory for it merely led to the rhythm secion tightening up and the jazz beat needs to swing and not beomce compulsive. 'Line up' and 'East 32nd St' on the Atlantic album Tristano. - absolute success 2. By doing this it offered the improviser new directions within the improvising, and this new directions in playing. It also require considerabl skill. Free form means playing without a fixed chord progression ,wtihout a time signature, without a specifed tempory. (completely spontaneously improvised) Those two sides were the very first free form improvisations ever made.(1949 - Intuition and