52 Facts About Lennie Tristano

Leonard Joseph Tristano was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and teacher of jazz improvisation.

Lennie Tristano studied for bachelor's and master's degrees in music in Chicago before moving to New York City in 1946.

Lennie Tristano's innovations continued in 1951, with the first overdubbed, improvised jazz recordings, and two years later, when he recorded an atonal improvised solo piano piece that was based on the development of motifs rather than on harmonies.

Lennie Tristano developed further via polyrhythms and chromaticism into the 1960s, but was infrequently recorded.

Lennie Tristano started teaching music, especially improvisation, in the early 1940s, and by the mid-1950s was concentrating on teaching in preference to performing.

Lennie Tristano taught in a structured and disciplined manner, which was unusual in jazz education when he began.

Lennie Tristano's mother, Rose Tristano, was born in Chicago.

Lennie Tristano's father, Michael Joseph Tristano, was born in Italy and moved to the United States as a child.

Lennie Tristano started on the family's player piano at the age of two or three.

Lennie Tristano had classical piano lessons when he was eight, but indicated later that they had hindered, rather than helped, his development.

Lennie Tristano initially went to standard state schools, but attended the Illinois School for the Blind in Jacksonville for a decade from around 1928.

Lennie Tristano studied for a bachelor's degree in music in performance at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago from 1938 until 1941, and stayed for another two years for further studies, although he left before completing his master's degree.

One of his aunts assisted Lennie Tristano by taking notes for him at university.

Lennie Tristano began giving private music lessons at around the same time, including to saxophonist Lee Konitz.

From 1943 Lennie Tristano taught at the Axel Christensen School of Popular Music.

Lennie Tristano first received press coverage for his piano playing in early 1944, appearing in Metronomes summary of music in Chicago from that year, and then in Down Beat from 1945.

Lennie Tristano married in 1945; his wife was Judy Moore, a musician who sang to his piano accompaniment in Chicago in the mid-1940s.

In 1948 Lennie Tristano played less often in clubs, and added Konitz and a drummer to his regular band, making it into a quintet.

Later that year Warne Marsh, another saxophonist student of Lennie Tristano's, was added to the group.

Lennie Tristano's band had two recording sessions in 1949 that proved to be significant.

At around the same time, Lennie Tristano started a record label named Jazz Records.

Lennie Tristano's recording studio remained in use, and was the scene of early sessions for Debut Records, co-founded by Roach and bassist Charles Mingus.

In 1952 Lennie Tristano's band performed occasionally, including as a quintet in Toronto.

Lennie Tristano's 1953 recording "Descent into the Maelstrom" was another innovation.

Lennie Tristano recorded his first album for Atlantic Records in 1955; he was allowed control over the recording process and what to release.

Some of his core students moved to California after Lennie Tristano's base was relocated.

Lennie Tristano gave fewer concerts than earlier, but in 1958 he had the first of what were sometimes lengthy engagements at New York's Half Note Club, after the owners persuaded him to perform, in part by replacing their club's Steinway piano with a new Bechstein of Tristano's choosing.

The New Lennie Tristano, as was stressed on the album cover, consisted entirely of piano solos and no overdubbing or tape-speed manipulation was employed.

The couple divorced in 1964, and Lennie Tristano later lost a custody battle with his ex-wife over the children.

Lennie Tristano played on occasion at the Half Note Club until the mid-1960s, and toured Europe in 1965.

Lennie Tristano performed with Ind and others in concerts in the UK in 1968; they were well received, and Tristano returned the following year.

Lennie Tristano declined offers to perform in the 1970s; he explained that he did not like to travel, and that the requirement for a career-minded musician to play concerts was not something that he wanted to follow.

Lennie Tristano continued teaching, and helped to organize concerts for some of his students.

Lennie Tristano had a series of illnesses in the 1970s, including eye pain and emphysema.

Lennie Tristano complained about the commercialization of jazz and what he perceived to be the requirement to abandon the artistic part of playing in order to earn a living from performing.

Bebopper Bud Powell affected Lennie Tristano's playing and teaching, as he admired the younger pianist's articulation and expression.

Lennie Tristano's playing has been labeled "cool jazz", but this fails to capture the range of his playing.

Eunmi Shim summarized the changes in Lennie Tristano's playing during his career:.

Lennie Tristano was born a prodigy and worked tirelessly to get better.

Lennie Tristano is regarded as one of the first to teach jazz, particularly improvisation, in a structured way.

Lennie Tristano taught musicians irrespective of their instrument and structured lessons to meet the needs of each individual.

Lennie Tristano did not teach the reading of music or the characteristics of different styles of jazz, instead challenging students in ways that would allow them to find and express their own musical feelings, or style.

One of the teaching tools often used by Lennie Tristano, including for scales, was the metronome.

Lennie Tristano encouraged his students to learn the melodies of jazz standards by singing them, then playing them, before working on playing them in all keys.

Lennie Tristano often had his students learn to sing and play the improvised solos of some of the best-known names in jazz, including Parker and Young.

Lennie Tristano stressed that the student was not learning to imitate the artist, but should use the experience to gain insight into the musical feeling conveyed.

Max Harrison indicated that the pianist had limited influence outside his own group of affiliated musicians; Robert Palmer, who pointed out that only one of Lennie Tristano's albums was in print at the time of his death, suggested that he was pivotal in the change from 1940s modern jazz to the freer styles of subsequent decades; and Thomas Albright similarly believed that his improvising prepared and developed new ground in the history of the music.

In Ind's opinion, Lennie Tristano's legacy "is what he added technically to the jazz vocabulary and his vision of jazz as a serious musical craft".

Shim suggested that the common under-appreciation of Lennie Tristano is attributable in part to his style being unusual and too difficult for jazz commentators to categorize.

Lennie Tristano was elected to Down Beats Hall of Fame in 1979.

In 2013 Lennie Tristano was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for Crosscurrents, an album of recordings from 1949.

Lennie Tristano was added to the Ertegun Hall of Fame in 2015.