Lee Konitz -- Unabashed-Lee

Jazz great Lee Konitz left us a few days ago at the age of 92. The virus got him, on top of a few other things.

Lee was a strange cat, and a "cool cat," dedicated to lyrical improvisation throughout his long career. He never wanted to have a band of his own. He just wanted to work through the Great American Songbook one more time, though he was happy to play in almost any context. Especially duets. His tone on the alto saxophone was straight and clear, tending toward melancholy in timbre. Yet his solos were typically buoyant and unhurried. He was quoted as saying that there were ten different layers to be explored in response to any given melody, and if the producer would give him time, he'd be happy to explore them all.

Critics tend to single out Konitz's 1961 album Motion as the high point of his career. And I notice that due to his death, it has suddenly shot up to #3 among Amazon jazz albums. That's too bad. I fear that many will find that trio date to be full of propulsive improvisation but too abstract to satisfy.

Konitz played on Miles Davis's seminal 1950 album Birth of the Cool--he was the last surviving member of that group--but here, in the liner notes to Motion, hardly more than a decade later, and with seventeen additional albums under his belt, Nat Hentoff describes him as almost a has-been.   

Hentoff writes: "In the past few years, as 'funky,' 'soulful,' 'hard,' and various forms of experimental jazz have nearly monopolized the foreground of jazz publicity, Konitz has become part of what Paul Desmond calls 'the jazz underground.'"

This is in 1961, mind you. Hentoff continues: 

Yet Konitz’s jazz conception is so singular and provocative that his influence is still felt, especially in Europe. Nor certainly has that influence disappeared in America. Konitz has set standards of melodic continuity and freshness of line that are respected by musicians who are otherwise widely dissimilar to him in approach; and I’m sure that as the scope of jazz improvisation continues to expand, the worth of Konitz’s continuing achievements will be recognized in retrospect and he himself will again he considered an important part of the foreground of jazz explora­tion.

Fifty years after that was written, Konitz was still going strong. Hoeing his own row. Doing what he wanted to do. 

I can't claim to have a mountain of Konitz CDs in my collection, but the few that I do have, along with Motion, might give some indication of the range of his artistry, and his curiosity.

Among Lee's early albums I would single out You and Lee from 1960, not because it's necessarily the best, but because it's the one I have. The snappy arrangements are by Jimmy Guiffre, and every track has the word "you" in the title--a reflection of Lee's playful nature. "You Don't Know What Love Is," "You're Driving Me Crazy," "I Didn't Know About You," and so on. Hence the album's title. The small brass ensemble backing Konitz, often playing with mutes, gives him the opportunity to weave and bob through the changes without taking on too much of the burden.

Then we have Motion from 1961.

Jumping two decades to 1984, Lee recorded a fine duet CD, Toot Sweet,  with the French pianist Michel Petrucciani. But here we see the perils of tireless improvisation. A sixteen-minute version of "'Round Midnight" followed by a rendition of "Lover Man" of almost equal length? The music is mostly brilliant, yes, but on occasion it flags.

It's interesting to compare this outing with some of Lee's earliest recordings, which date from the late 1940s and early 50s. They were originally released as 78s, and later collected on the 1955 LP Subconscious-Lee. The longest of the cuts doesn't exceed 4 minutes by more than a few seconds. Very good stuff. (Listen to a sample here.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e66PkFEl2g

Five years after Toot Sweet we have Lee recording with Fender Rhodes keyboard, guitar, and electric bass, on Lee Konitz in Rio.  On the liner notes Lee comments, "I was thinking more of the Bossa Nova 'beautiful songs' tradition, but this has turned out really contemporary—South American fusion. I feel like I'm in the twentieth century!" In that same year he recorded a lively straight-ahead quartet date with a young Fred Hersch on piano called Round and Round, on which he even gives John Coltrane's Giant Steps a shot. 

Ten years later he's recording a live date called Alone Together at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles playing standards (what else?) with pianist Brad Mehldau and bassist Charlie Haden. This is a less happy combination, because Mehldau is even more prone than Konitz to noodling himself into a dreary corner. Still, flashes of brilliance abound. (In fact, I'm listening to it now, and it sounds pretty great.)

That same year, at the age of 70 more or less, Konitz was involved in recording what I consider a masterpiece, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler's haunting, flowing, drum-free Angel Song, in the company of guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Dave Holland.

Konitz recorded 25 albums in the 21st century, but I haven't heard a single one. I did hear him play at the Artist's Quartet in St. Paul in 2007 with a local pianist he'd only met twenty minutes before the show. He sounded like Lee. Forging ahead, curious to find out what he himself would come up with. Because he and the pianist had not had time to rehearse the endings to the tunes, when things were winding down he would jump suddenly into the next standard.   

Two comments from those who worked with Konitz recently are worth repeating. Dan Tepfer, a pianist and frequent Konitz duo partner, said in a 2012 interview. “I always think of Lee as a Zen master ... There’s nothing keeping [him] from responding to what’s actually going on in the moment.” 

And tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, in a Downbeat interview, touched on Konitz’s preternatural ability to avoid the obvious by steering clear of conventional rhythmic patterns: “Phrases are never in groups of two or four or eight beats or notes," Turner said, "but in sevens or nines or fives or sixes. His lines are also very involved, long, connected, extremely lyrical.”

Unconventional, yet extremely lyrical. A winning combination? Yes.