Very Cool - Lee Konitz

 

Kary's Trance

Very Cool

Lee Konitz

Cover Photo: William Clayton

Art Direction: Sheldon Marks

Verve Cleff Series MGV-8209

1957

From the back cover: Lee Konitz, born October 13, 1927, is one of the exceedingly few individualists of his generation on his instrument, the alto saxophone, shichen the enveloping arrival and posthumous continued command of Charlie Parker. Konitz has an immediately identifiable style and sound, a conception marked by absorbing and frequently daring logic, and an increasing story-telling emotional depth. He has also indicated recently that he is capable of developing a significant voice on the tenor saxophone as well.

For this session, Lee chose Don Ferrata, trumpet; Sal Mosca, piano; Peter And, bass; and Shadow Wilson, drums. Ferrara, who has recored with Gerry Mulligan, is laos a historian of the jazz trumpet and wrote two illuminating articles on the jazz odyssey of the instrument in the Wine and July, 1956, Metronome. Don has played with Woody Herman, Georgie Auld, Jerry Wald, and Lennie Tristano with whom he studied for a number of years. He also is a teacher himself.

"Don," declares Konitz, "is a real improviser when he's playing as well as he's able to. He's a very complete player – sound, ideas, time – and possesses very cohesive intuition."

Sal Mosca, who studied with Tristano for some eight years and now teaches, is described by Konitz as "one of the most spontaneous piano players I know. I really didn't think of the piano as that kind of an instrument. It's hard enough for a horn player to improvise, but pianists usually are even more set in their ways. But Sal is an improviser. He's also a real pacer – he's not afraid to sit back and let some time go by. He's not hung up in the compulsive, forging-ahead kind of way in which many piano players are involved.

Bassist Peter Ind has worked and studied with Tristano, and has also played with Lee Konitz, Jutta Hipp and others. "For me," Konitz emphasizes, "he has become one of the great bass players. He has great time and sound and can play extraordinary solos. He has improved a lot, and seems to have submerged some of the ego problems and become album to  be part of a group. He projects a marvelous driving mode. Peter has the same essence that everybody seem to gather from Lennie – the ability to be spontaneous and individual."

Shadow Wilson, 38, not a Lennie Tristano student, has played with scores of groups. Among then have been Lucky Millinder, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Earl Hines, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Illinois Jacquet and Ella Fitzgerald. "Shadow," Lee feels, "is in the straight line of group players. He's a real functional rhythm section player in the Dave Tough tradition. He's a sensitive drummer, and is sensitive to the sound he gets on his set. And he never oversteps. He's a group drummer."

Don Ferrara wrote Sunflower and Movin' Around, Kary's Trance by Lee, is a play on The Kerry Dance, brought to mind by Lee's youngest child (the youngest of five), Karen, not yet a year old at the time of the composition. Lee chose the two standards for the uncomplicated reason that he lies playing them. On Billie's Bounce, Lee and Don Play Bird's choruses together and go for themselves on their solos. "Playing his chorus," Lee added, "was, I felt, a vlid way of expressing my appreciation to Bird."

In talking of this album, Lee also was drawn into a discussion of changes in his own playing in recent years. "Most of all, I've tried to get in closer contact with my feelings. I'm aware more of the time of what I'm really doing and of how it feels to me. Now, that may sound cryptic, but years ago, I remember playing with Lennie Tristano in a club. We went off and at the end of a set, arm-in-arm, and Lennie said: 'How do you feel?' 'So-So,' I answered. 'Gee,' Lennie exclaimed, "You sounded crazy that set." I was disturbed that there could be that distance between how I felt and how I had sounded to him. These days, it's much closer – how I feel and how I sound.

"The most important thing. I've discovered, that I can do is to enjoy myself when I'm playing. I'm not as concerned any more with setting the world on fire with original music. If it comes, it comes; the main thing is to enjoy playing. I don't care if I'm playing straight melody; I can get satisfaction out of that. I've heard some of the young kids go through their paces, and when they land on one note or two notes of a melody, they give it away with the corniest vibrato and sound like a studio man. Playing a melody well isn' as easy as they think.

"I'm really concerned with playing one good note," Konitz underlined. "In a number of the young jazzmen, I hear all of the proper ingredients, but I don't hear one note having the player's personal feeling. I think, on the other hand, that I'm using my own feeling when I play."

"Getting back to playing a melody," Konitz continued, "all of the great players can do that. One of my students brought my a record of Louis Armstrong playing Sleepy Time Down South. Louis gets so deep into every single note. Every note is an expression feeling. That's really playing; it's like pressing the note of the piano into the keyboard.

Lee went on the subject of repertoire. "I have in mind how a tune should sound to me. If the tune has the ingredients with  regard to good melody or good changes, it well be a good enough challenge. If I got to the point where I could play perfectly the tunes I known a number of times, I suppose I'd figure I'd achieved the point and would look for something harder to do. So far, however, I've been playing a handful of tunes a number of years and I guess I don't know them as well as I fee I could. It's very easy to flit around, but now I'm more concerned with something becoming a part of me and that takes a long time – 10, 15, 20 years. Take Crazy She Calls Me. I've just started to learn it, and figure I have 15 or 20 years to go on that tune. – Nat Hentoff

Sunflower

Stairway To The Stars

Movin' Around

Kary's Trance

Crazy She Calls Me

Billie's Bounce