Round and Round and Round

In all branches of the arts there are the introspective creators, for whom technique is the accompaniment to inner reflection which just happens to find its way through a medium of artistic expression. One hesitates to call such art the outlet 'of mysticism, but as an approximation that's not bad. I remember my first view of an Alben Pinkum Ryder painting a darkly lit, hardly visible horseman rode across a canvas that seemed indifferent to the event as an imitation of life but was tuned to the inner desperation of the rider to I get somewhere. Such art is not easily appropriated, and its composers are likely to be  difficult to follow, giving them singular reputations but little posterity as schools to be followed.

Jazz has its own tradition in this regard. While Charlie Parker was making converts nightly in 52nd Street haunts, another originator, Lennie Tristano, was playing piano in lesser-known haunts, defying the new popular conventions of spinning improvisations out of extended harmonies. The blind Tristano had trouble finding rhythm sections because he was less interested in chord progressions than he was in shifting meters and key changes. Above all, he believed in melodic improvisation free from the usual standard structures that keep musicians practicing harmonic devices for hours in a lonely room. It was an alternative to the Parker/Gillespie mode of playing and oi:ie that attracted far fewer adherents because of its difficulty. But one found hipster who was attracted (describing himself as a zoot suiter with yellow socks) was Lee Konitz.

Perhaps because he started as a clarinet player, Konitz as an aspiring alto sax man found the winding, sinuous lines of Tristano appealing. The style certainly was different: it avoided tension, building in improvisation, and maintained an evenhandedness throughout, relying on sonorics and the full exploration of melodic themes to compensate for the excitement associated with the Parker horn.

For Konitz this meant a soft vibrato and a tighter sense of phrasing than his contemporaries used. The result of Tristano's influence upon Konitz' early training can be found to best advantage in the now-cbssic Miles Davis album, Birth of the Cool. The unusual orchestration (French horn and tuba) and careful coloration have been cited as the origins of a "jazz goes to Europe" brand of the music.

Konitz, in Round and Round, displays a fully mature and well-seasoned talent. The charge against the cool school {later the West Coast scene) was that of sterility against the "hotter" playing of New York bop. Suffice it to say that the Konitz of better years here reveals a much fuller sound on alto and a laid-back tendency that greatly complements his devotion to the tunes he plays. If he is one of the introverts of jazz, he has built around him a house of high character in the standard songs he has made his life.

"Someday My Prince Will Come" hangs like a hlgh cloud on his horn (I would swear that he plays soprano sax here), rich with extensions and, unless I was wrong, a dash of sly humor at the expense of both Miles Davis and Paul Desmond, whose renditions of this are legend.

All of the numbers on this album are in 3/4 time; but, given the dexterity of Konitz and his sidemen, that means little, for they double time and constantly play with rhythmic devices. It strikes me, too, that Konitz has come to a late appreciation of Parker in his sound, and it greatly enhances the emotional intensity of a rune like " Lover Man." The ingredient of reticence in Konitz' inventions (a kind of condition of notes th.it pulls rather than pushes) is rounded out with 2 newer lyrical romanticism for just the right recipe in the treatment
of these ballads.