Piano Legend Lenny Tristano

 

Piano legend Lenny Tristano performing at the 1965 Berlin Piano Workshop.  

Berlin Piano Workshop, 1965. Lennie Tristano, byname of Leonard Joseph Tristano, (born March 19, 1919, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died November 18, 1978, New York City, New York), American jazz pianist, a major figure of cool jazz and an influential teacher. Tristano, who became totally blind as a child, began playing piano in taverns at age 12. He grew up in Chicago, where he studied at the American Conservatory of Music (B.Mus., 1943) and was a noted performer and teacher before moving to New York City in 1946. There his advanced concepts of improvisation and of harmony soon brought him dedicated followers, most notably saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh and guitarist Billy Bauer. They played in Tristano’s noted 1949 sextet recordings, which included “Wow” and “Crosscurrent” and were characterized by brilliant ensemble melodic interplay. The recordings also featured two free-form collective improvisations, “Intuition” and “Digression,” which predated the free jazz of Ornette Coleman by nearly a decade. In 1951 Tristano opened a school of jazz, which he ran until 1956, after which he spent most of his time teaching privately. He performed and recorded rarely; his last public appearance in the United States was in 1968.