NOTE TO NOTE
Jazz Records 10
Just Prez; Palo Alto Scene; It's Personal; Note To Note; There Will Always Be You. (40:43) PERSONNEL: Tristano, piano; Sonny Dallas, bass; Carol Tristano, drums.

His reputation precedes him. Lennie Tristano released only a few records in his lifetime, and two classics for Atlantic, Lennie Tristano and The New Tristano, have been scarce for years. Although the pianist retreated from public view years before his death in 1978, the mystique persists. Remembered as an iconoclast in the studio, a guru to Warne Marsh and Lee Kanitz, a radical improviser, and an opinionated critic of rhythm sections, Tristano made an impact on several levels. Foremost was his ability to execute melodic and harmonic inventions at high speeds. Listening to Rhino's long-overdue reissue of Lennie Tristano and The New Tristano, which combines the albums (less one track) on one CD, the commotion once stirred up by Tristano can seem puzzling. Tristano's most controversial innovations--multi-tracking and overdubbing (1956) and improvising without chord changes (1949)--have long since been accepted by the mainstream. Lennie Tristano includes "Requiem," a soulful blues for Charlie Parker, and the locomotive "Turkish Mambo," both utilizing multiple piano tracks, and the notorious trio sessions in which Tristano recorded over a rhythm track, adjusting the tape speed to his taste.

These experiments reflected frustration with rhythm players, who rarely provided the metronomic pulse he preferred. (Today, he'd likely play over a drum machine.) Live (1956) quartet performances with Lee Konitz make up the second side of Lennie Tristano. Like Tristano, Konitz explores the melodic potential of tunes like "You Go To My Head" smoothly and fluently, but without conspicuous emotion. The New Tristano (1962) is Tristano's masterpiece, with striking solo performances that require the disclaimer: "No use is made of multi- tracking, overdubbing or tape-speeding." Performances like "Scene And Variations" invite comparison to Art Tatum and Bud Powell, two acknowledged influences. Like Powell, Tristano explored melodies with the speed and logic of a Charlie Parker solo, and could spin out complex ideas faster than the listener could assimilate them. Like Powell, he made it sound effortless.

"Becoming" and "Deliberation" demonstrate Tristano's capacity for playing his own bass lines, combining the strident left hand with changes in tempo and torrents of well-placed notes. Although additional material from these sessions has surfaced, Rhino's reissue adds no extra tracks or commentary, but reproduces liner notes. Shouldn't they have done more with Lennie Tristano? Tristano recorded Note To Note (1964-'65) during informal duets with bassist Sonny Dallas. He apparently intended to include drums, which were added by Carol Tristano nearly 30 years later. Neither the performance nor the recorded sound matches the high quality of the Atlantic sessions. The pianist doesn't consistently display the speed or intensity managed a few years earlier for The New Tristano. With "There Will Always Be You" and "Note To Note," Tristano revisits familiar themes, probing and pushing them in interesting directions. If it's not essential Tristano, Note To Note offers enough of Tristano's melodic improvisations to satisfy the faithful.