Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music » (New Edition)

“In Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music, Shim has provided a comprehensive biographical and analytical account of one of jazz’s most important and most frequently misunderstood figures. Her insights into Tristano’s personality are well nuanced, and the focus on his teaching makes a unique contribution to the history of jazz. This vividly written study is likely to become a standard work.”
—Brian Priestley, author of Chasin’ the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker and coauthor of The Rough Guide to Jazz

“Eunmi Shim’s book is clearly a labor of love. Her thorough examination of Tristano’s teaching is particularly important, for no one previously has assembled the thoughts of so many former students. Her illuminating transcriptions of, and commentaries on, Tristano’s solos are also valuable. Lennie Tristano is an important contribution to the literature on jazz.”

—Thomas Owens, author of Bebop: The Music and Its Players

“Comprehensive, objective, and acute in its judgments, this is the biography of Lennie Tristano we have been waiting for.”

—Larry Kart, author of Jazz in Search of Itself

Lennie Tristano occupies a rare position not only in jazz history but in the history of twentieth-century music. Emerging from an era when modernism was the guiding principle in art, Tristano explored musical avenues that were avant-garde even by modernism’s experimental standards. In so doing, he tested and transcended the boundaries of jazz.

In 1949, years before musicians such as Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor took credit for the movement, Tristano made the first recordings of “free jazz,” a new kind of group improvisation based on spontaneous interaction among band members without any regard for predetermined form, harmony, or rhythm. Then, in the 1950s, Tristano broke new ground by his use of multitracking.

Tristano was also a pioneer in the teaching of jazz, devoting the latter part of his career almost exclusively to music instruction. He founded a jazz school—the first of its kind—among whose students were saxophonists Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz, and pianist Sal Mosca.

With its blend of oral history, archival research, and musical analysis, Lennie Tristano sheds new light on the important role Tristano played in the jazz world and introduces this often-overlooked musician to a new generation of jazz aficionados.

Eunmi Shim received her Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is now Assistant Professor of Music at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This is her first book.

William G. Kenz - Library Journal

The label misunderstood lonerhas been one of the weights shouldered by jazz musician Lennie Tristano (1919 78) from the early 1940s, when he first began playing in Chicago clubs, to his dying days in New York. Not only critics but also fellow musicians often portrayed the pianist and teacher as a cold, stubborn, arrogant narcissist. But perhaps his greatest legacy was his overwhelming desire to see jazz as art in and of itself, not subject to market forces such as smoky clubs and unscrupulous record companies. Over time, Tristano's image has softened somewhat owing to more exposure via his recordings and those he influenced. Now, in her first book, Shim (music, Worcester Polytechnic Inst.) offers a more respectful and fuller view than other critics have offered of this influential man, her thorough research honed to a fine balance and finish of biographic information and musical theory. Together with Peter Ind's Jazz Visions: Lennie Tristano and His Legacy, her book gives readers an excellent opportunity to learn why Tristano was so important to the evolution of jazz. Recommended.