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Music With Tristan

Tristano's Music These three visionary artists offered music to the small public. Byzantine melodci lines, attenuated rhythms, acerbic harmonies. Thelonious Monk, the most admired Jazz composer ofthe postwar ear wrote only single chorus instrumental Melodies while the extended oks of such later players as john coltrane and Ornette Coleman are unrelated to the classical music tradition. Blind virtuoso focused on omplex linear improvisation that utilized polyrhythmic and poly tonal concepts. Using only a relatively few standard songs as a harmonic basis, he composed many striking pieces that sound like spontaneosus solos. Sacrificing the convetional concept o the swinging rhythm section, he inited on a near metronomic , almost faceless bass and drum accompaniment The music of the men who gathered round Lennie Tristano in the mid 1940's (develepemnt of jazz avant garde because 'Intuition' and 'Digression' free jazz performances Tristano -like (free improvisation 'Abstract No.1) - structural concepts The deeper significance of Tristano's music lies in 2 directions, first, that tristano transforms jazz historical self consciousness into a rationale for making a new kind of music second he and his disciples focus on jazz rhythms Tristano's Rhythmic approach involved superimposing layers of poly rhythms onto the 4/4 pulse in order to free up the placing of accens nd generate microsubivisions of the beat, as though the oal were to travel by other means o the place of charlie parker i.e. 'Line up', 'C minor Complex' His phrasing across the bar lines, his superimposition of elaborate poly rhythms over the ground beat, his biting percussiveness, his splintered harmonic structures Tristano experimented with atonality, total improvisation, overdubbing and other unsuaul devices, however Gioia argues that his mucis had little to do with pared-down melody lines, the warm lyricism, the relaxed tempos, and chamber music delicacy that characterised the 'Cool' idiom....