Windows
Lee Konitz-Hal Galper..............SteepleChase SCS 1057
Lee Konitz: Sax, Hal Galper: Piano
I‘m Getting Sentimental Over You,Windows,
Villainesque,
Sweet and Lovely,
Stella By Starlight,
Goodbye,
Solar,
Soliloquy,
Softly As In A Morning Sunrise
Liner Notes: "Windows"Unique among artists, the jazz musician's life is bedeviled by the circumstances under which he plies his trade. As a performer, his services are required during most people's leisure time, and rarely in any one place for any length of time. And, although an entertainer, he enjoys few of the trappings of stardom that accompany others whose talents often may be punier. Last - but by no means least - his modus operandum is particularly demanding. Jazz sets itself apart from the other arts by its insistence upon improvisation as a raison d'être. The discriminating audience therefore demands that jazz practitioners be spontaneous composers, purveyors of non-repetitive lyricism night after night. No other art form sets its journeymen such an arduous curriculum.
Little wonder, then, that the emotional and physical erosion in many should be so complete. Little wonder that so many jazz soloists are content to construct their own liturgy Of mannerisms as a prop in case their imaginations dry up. Some spend their entire lifetimes ankle deep in such cliches - and often reap disproportionate reward for the popular virtue of never surprising, never passing over the familiar for the adventurous.
Such a defense mechanism has never been part of Lee Konitz's armory. Ever since his first jazz job - nearly thirty years ago - he has employed an iconoclastic style of playing that is still widely misunderstood. It was conceived amid the seething experimentation of the Bop era. Yet, when all other contemporary altoists remained umbilically attached to the massive influence of Charlie Parker, Konitz found something fundamentally different to say. Under Claude Thornhill's leadership, in 1947, it was used to shed new light on such Parker standards as Anthropology, Donna Lee and Yardbird Suite.
Within two years, Konitz's approach was a vital ingredient in two additional, far-reaching developments. At the end of 1948, his earlier work with Thornhill was extended, and Lee's became an important color in the palette of Miles Davis's Birth Of The Cool band. The following year, Konitz participated in Lennie Tristano's famous experiment with free form, producing Intuition.
At this time, Lee was only 22. But, as the Fifties unfolded, and just as he was emerging as an important small group leader, he surprised many by joining Stan Kenton's aggregation. His experiences with that, a Young Blood orchestra, were to lend his playing greater directness, especially rhythmically. It became less easy to regard his style as dispassionate, though many continued to do so.
After leaving Kenton in 1955, Konitz spent the rest of the decade either leading his own groups or reunited with Tristano. Then, as the Fifties became the Swinging 'Sixties, Konitz found himself out of fashion. Though he never really had much in common with the West Coast cool school, the demise of that style submerged Konitz too.
For four years, he lived in northern California, often doing non-musical jobs - digging gardens, painting bathrooms. The re-entry to music was slow. He taught music at San Jose, and gradually began playing small gigs at weekends. Finally, he headed for Chicago, his childhood home.
It would be easy to be maudlin and mawkish about the emotional erosion involved in enduring apathy for so long. But Konitz has no time for that kind of attitude. It is as alien to his thinking as any thought of musical compromise in an attempt to 'buy' recognition. Throughout that period he never got involved with any fashionable fad: Funk, Soul, Bossa Nova, Third Stream (or, later, so-called Jazz-Rock). Nor has he fallen into the trap of attempting to recreate earlier and increasingly more distant successes. He has simply continued to evolve his style, to probe those directions he considered valid.
Now just a little short of his fiftieth year, Lee is, of course, an animal of rather different stripe than he was thirty years ago, even if the fundaments remain unaltered. He is a much freer player now, and a musician who enjoys constantly changing frameworks. In the past two years, he has recorded solo, duo, trio, quartet and quintet al- bums. This is the fifth time he has recorded in a duo context in his career, and it is just as different from the last (SCS/SCCD-31018) as that was from those first bitter-sweet collaborations with Billy Bauer in 1950 and 1951.
There are obvious textural differences, of course. With Bauer, the effect was ethereal, almost other-worldly; with Red Mitchell, a more pointedly rhythmic impetus was allied to somber sonorities; with Galper here, the effect is somewhere between the two.
Partly, this is due to Konitz himself. Although he has pursued his musical aims with a dogged single mindedness, he has never been afraid to change the emphasis of his extemporizations. When he re-emerged in the mid-Sixties to rebuild an old career, many were startled by an apparent change of direction. In fact, it was a change of emphasis signaled as early as 1961 (Motion, Verve). It entailed a re- examination of technique; a paring down of the number of notes played, so that the lithe, multi-noted lines of the Forties and Fifties were replaced by more angular contours. Space became an integral part of his improvisations, and, in this, he was among the vanguard.
The tonal alteration is also important. The 20-year-old's glassy sonority became the 30-year-old's more biting tone. In his Forties, the tone gained more iron. Moreover, where the youth was unable to find an appropriate vocal inflection - and therefore did without one - the mature artist has gained that facility.
The other misunderstanding, from which Konitz still suffers to some extent, is having his work described as cerebral, a facile description which he has always disliked. The breadth and vigor of his musical inquiries certainly make him one of the idiom's great mystics, but his playing has never been unemotional. And, nowadays, it has taken on a fresh subtlety, serenity, indeed a privacy that few jazz musicians have ever achieved. The effect is to bring to his playing a restless, unpredictable and occasionally brusque eloquence, which can dignify even the most listless theme.
Goodbye is a case in point- refashioned and given totally fresh emotional point by Konitz's ability to compress a banal melody into a compelling distillation of unexpected clarity of purpose.
A better comparison with his earlier work is Sweet And Lovely, which he last recorded in October, 1956. Where the earlier version was a benign, free-wheeling excursion, there are now subtle Monkish overtones as the tempo is let down a little. Note particularly the modified stride figures from Gapler in Lee's final solo chorus: by taking over the role of walking bass, Hal gives the performances an affecting, rolling gait.
A different point of comparison is provided by the title track, Windows a Chick Corea original, first performed by the Stan Getz Quartet of 1967. Konitz's dry, swerving pungency is in marked contrast to Getz's sweeping romanticism.
l'm Getting Sentimental Over You is studious, but as gifted and elegant a performance as you would wish to hear. The stark grandeur of Konitz's contemporary playing is further underlined in the uncompromisingly swinging· Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise and Solar. The phrasing is drawn tightly across the fabric of each piece, lending each an acute sense of urgency. The ballad, Stella By Starlight, is completely refurbished, so that only the distilled essence of the tune remains. It contrasts rippling piano with rubato alto in alternating episodes.
On two titles, the protagonists play solo. Lee's aptly-titled Soliloquy is a crisp, meticulously sculpted statement, misleadingly simple in appearance, but executed with masterly logic. Hal's Villainesque is a fairy-tale structure of immensely baroque design, seething with dancing figures.
Both men weave their contrasting approaches into tapestries of intricate and absorbing design. Konitz is spare, skeletal, deploying space with malign wizardry; Galper is expansive and romantic, working broadly within the guidelines chronicled by Bill Evans, but spiced with ingredients from the entire tradition of jazz piano.
Hal, incidentally, was the pianist who toured with Chet Baker's group in the middle Sixties- the one the trumpeter formed on his return to America from Italy. It made LPs for Colpix and Mercury/Limelight. Earlier, Hal, who's from Boston - scene of some of Konitz's important early work - studied at the famous Berklee School of Music. At that time, he leaned more heavily on the influence of Lennie Tristano, as, of course did Bill Evans, his more recent mentor.
Hal has also been recording with Sam Rivers in the sixties, one LP for Blue Note. Since then he has made 3 LPs on his own for the Mainstream label.
These Windows, then, don't merely provide an outward view; they afford an opportunity for inward examination, too. And a peek over his particular sill presents a tableau of absorbing and effortless lyricism. Indeed, the music is so personal that the listener occasionally feels like an intruder Konitz in fact is composing spontaneously at a level higher than most jazzmen ever attain. The irony is that - although, in theory, this is what the jazz audience demands - in practice, the results can be too challenging.
Chris Sheridan
July, 1976
