This is New England Public Radio's Jazz Beat, on time, meaning with a podcast edition of my Jazz blog, which you can find at nepr.net. This edition of Jazz Beat features an interview I conducted with Lee Conitz in 2004 before concerts he was playing in New England, where presenting the interview now as a memorial tribute to the saxophonist who died on April 15th, 2020, at age 92 from effects of the coronavirus. Lee Conitz came to prominence in the late 40s as an alto saxophonist whose mature style was unique for betraying little of the influence of Charlie Parker. Early in his career, Conitz recorded with Miles Davis on the birth of the cool, and with Lenny Chustano, Jerry Mulligan, Claude Thornhill, and Stan Kenton.
He was long respected as one of the purest improvisers in modern jazz, and a saxophonist who readily adapted to playing with a variety of groups across the globe. In the years since the interview was conducted, Conitz continued his collaborations with leading figures in jazz, including Brad Meldau, Bill Frissell, Joel Lavano, and Matt Wilson. Musical selections here include Charlie Parker's classic blues, Parker's mood, and Conitz playing, how about you, all the things you are, lover men, these foolish things, and subconsciously. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Lee?
Yeah, it seems to have cleared up. Very good. We're both sensitive to sounds. Well, it's good and bad characteristics.
I can get very angry at loud speaking cell phoneers, et cetera, et cetera. And I also enjoy a good... Well, thank you for joining us this afternoon, and we're going to record this for the next half hour or so. And let me begin by asking you, you don't mind talking about Claude Thornhill or Lester Young or Lenny Chustano?
Whatever, don't you prepare me? Fine. Let me ask you then first off about Matt Wilson, this amazing drummer who you've made music with in recent years and who we'll be working with you next week. Matt has just made a duo record for Steepe Chase, in which as a result of hearing the first tune, which he played on his gong a few times, I entitled the album, Gong with Wind, terribly clever.
I think a bunch of reaction from you. Maybe the audience will be in an uproar. I'm trying to lay back here. I'm actually holding the recording in my hand, and I love it.
I got it just last week. Oh, great. Thank you. I saw Matt just a couple of weeks ago up in Toronto.
I heard him playing, and I think it was four different contexts of three or four days. And he's just... But there are many different people. Indeed.
In fact, I heard him playing vibraphone for the first time with Jane Eyreblum. Oh, really? Yeah, in a very Asian-oriented presentation of hers, and then heard him with Denny Zaitlin, and with Dina de Rose, and with Ted Rosenthal. So yes, Gong with the wind.
But that's not based on the changes of Gong with the wind, is it? No, but it's Gong, right? Indeed. Gong with wind.
I'm thinking of the next situation after with Matt, it will be May. We're premiering a nine-piece group at Birdland here in New York that Matt will be playing with. Looking forward, and then we're going to Brazil with it in May, at the end of May. Oh, you'll take the nine-piece ensemble to Brazil, huh?
Oh, just Matt and the bass player and the arranger. Oh, hot. Any work with some musicians there in Brazil? Yeah.
Build up the ensemble from the local stock, huh? Yeah. Very good. Very fine writer, Oh, Hot Talmore.
I don't know if you know my record, French impressionist music with the string quartet? Yes, I have vague familiarity with it. Well, he orchestrated that for piano sheets of the various composers. And he's a very talented writer and a fine tenor player.
He's taken my themes and I'm up for a nine-piece group. Now, over the course of the 55-ish year-long career of yours, there are so many different contexts, ensembles from solos and duos and trios to the stan canton orchestra, to nonettes of your own. Is there anything in particular that, where was Lee Conitz in that big sort of continuum of ensembles and instrumentations and settings? Well, I tried thinking in terms of being a side man and all these are usually invited to situations.
I tried to lend a voice to the ensemble, as I can. Sometimes it's a different kind of music than I can handle, but for the most part, I can travel all around and play with Italian musicians, so-called locals, from different countries. And they're all highly skilled by now. And I can have a good play and feel like a professional.
So I'm wherever I can sit in in those kind of situations. Jazz certainly makes one, or a good jazz background, as conducive to adaptation, I would think. Well, it's essential. But the implication was that I don't have my own band and playing consistent kind of my own kind of music.
Is that what you were asking me? No, I don't mean to imply anything. Just more a basic statement that I'd like to suggest that a substantial background, like your own, in jazz, makes it easier to adapt to lots of different types of settings. The thing is that most of these settings are fairly consistent in the so-called straight ahead, kind of playing on tunes, themes and variations.
I don't deal in Asian music or Indian music or exotic world music. So in that sense, I can play all the things you are in all these different contexts and get away with it. Indeed. Now, I recall reading you say that when you play body and soul, for instance, that you like to play it as though you've never played it before.
All those familiar tunes that I've been playing over the years, that's my intention each day. They approach it from the first note. Someone is writing a kind of a conversation with me a book. And I was just proofreading it here.
And something like that is involved. I just forgot what it was. We'll let that one go for a minute. Well, I also recall reading you say in the notes that you wrote to your recording with Brad Meldown and Charlie Hayden just a few years ago that you love playing the blues as a 12-bar form.
But the blues into nation or tonality is not your natural vocabulary. I don't love the blues. I can't help but play some kind of a blues-inflected phrase. But it never sounds terribly convincing to me.
It seems like a whole philosophy behind that kind of playing that I'm not familiar with. Now, is that something that you deliberately avoided or? Yeah, I just didn't identify with that kind of a sound and that kind of a feeling. Try to play as so-called funky as possible as a result of my upbringing and my experience in life.
But I don't have the black experience. To pretend I do makes me feel like most of the pop people I listen to are quite a few of the jazz people I listen to. We learn from the great black players in jazz, of course. Tilt her through into our white experience, I guess.
Something like that. And the blues is part of the black experience, I think. Well, do you think that other white players who are more drawn to blues and adept, say, executing it are inauthentic? They sound that way to me.
How many people that really sounded if they eat in the black players, most of them sounded kind of phony with that. Charlie Parker was a great musician, and the blues was a great part along there somehow. But most of the guys just kind of jive on that thing. Would you say the same about Lester Young?
Definitely. Do you hear the blues and Lester's playing the way the blues? And how about while both Bird and Lester are such great blues players, I know that they both were significant models for you. Were they so more in terms of pure sound or rhythmic conception?
The whole thing. Everything that they did to me and especially identified with Lester Young, that as an alto player, they were trying to figure out why I didn't play with the tenor. I decided that that was my voice, and Lester was music that I loved. Well, it's interesting that you gained a renowned early on in your career for developing a sound that was distinct from Charlie Parker's dominant style.
You played the same instrument. And I wonder if sticking with the alto rather than tenor was also sort of natural to you, that if you were gone with tenor, you might have ended up aeping Lester's style. Well, since Charlie Parker's so likely that it would have ate Lester, that would have come closer. But I remember one time at the original Birdland Club, Charlie asked to borrow my alto for a set.
And I sat in amazement and listened to him play that music and thinking, my god, that never came out when I played it. I don't understand how you thought that. Now, did you spend some time touring with Kenton on a tour that also had Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, if I recall correctly? After I left the band, after about a year and a half of traveling as a sax section as part of the band, I got a call from Stan asking me to come on a tour as a soloist.
And I said, great, who else will be on it? He said, Charlie Parker, I don't think I ever found out what his intention was in doing that. The result was that I was there playing music that I had played when I was in the band. And Charlie was there playing new arrangements in a new situation.
And he wasn't in top form at that time. And so we got a chance to hang out a little bit. I appreciate it very much being able to have them a little bit. But didn't he actually compliment you on not copying him the way so many others did?
Quite a number of times when we met, he would kind of volunteer that. And did you feel complimented by that? Was that was there? Yeah, I wasn't trying not to play like him.
I was involved with Lenny Tristano and learning kind of about the music through him kind of going in a direction that he was giving an example of, was intriguing to me. And so I was already pretty involved by the time I heard Charlie Parker. Oh, you were. So you already had met Lenny and were involved with him, but before you heard Bird.
Yeah. Now, do you think, I mean, this is pure speculation, but do you think that Parker might have been a more compelling model for you if you had not had Lenny's guidance? Unintuitively. No question about it.
He was a major player. And everyone who was interested in how to play this music had to go in that direction. And unfortunately, it meant because of all the material, and everything he did was so compelling that you had to kind of play those phrases and play that kind of sound and that kind of time feeling. Really duplicate the whole thing.
Lenny's influence was so direct. He gave examples of things, and all his students sounded different from one another. Similarities, of course, from being together and playing together. But much more differences than in the so-called be-bop influence.
Nobody studied directly with Charlie Parker. I mentioned Matt Wilson, but other players, who are you hearing in the music today that you think are adding something new to the vocabulary or maybe pushing some new directions that are interesting to you? Well, I'm enjoying the show very much. I'm enjoying the Jared Streo.
If he would just stop making noise, enjoyed the Wayne Shorter's new group, played the concert a day before his band in Hungary last year, and they sent me a CD of both our concerts. And I enjoyed that concert more than even the record that got of his. And Mark Turner is an interesting tenor player, I think. Oh Lord, there's a lot of young people around that are doing interesting things.
And the music will just continue to thrive. There's just too much of interest. You would think that everything had been done already, but that's not the case. Look forward to a lot of interesting stuff.
Mark Turner mentioning him reminds me that he's one of the players who suggest to me that there's a kind of renewed interest in Lenny Tristano himself. Would you agree? Well, in that case, I think so. That's that perspective now.
But they're actually intrigued with Warren Marsh. One of the unsung cats is the book of the same name as stated eloquently. How do you remember Warren? I know you were very close for many years and made music together.
Well, we weren't really very close, but we did make some very close music together on occasion. To know him is a really great, pure player. With the minimum of affectation, they play near perfect as composers, as they're providing composers, we're looking to play a perfect piece, as much as possible, but I think if she has an imperfect art, try for it. But he's one of the great ones, I think.
Warren Marsh. Yeah, it was personality or his playing. So he didn't get the top people who know him, know how great he was. But he went shorter and Joe Henderson lucked to talk about it.
In the past 40 years, there seems to be a kind of obsession with what's the next new thing going to be? Has jazz reached the kind of cul-de-sac stylistically? And I believe I saw you describe improvisation as a miracle. Oh, yeah, I really had to play the concert in London a few weeks ago.
And I used that word after playing a duet with John Taylor. It just is amazing. That it's possible to stand up there and compose together, yet. Or with a group, a minor miracle maybe, but it's like a major one to me.
Well, your careers, of course, obviously the art of improvisation has sustained you and has inspired you. And you have been one of the most gifted improvisers that we've known. But during your formative years, jazz was in a state of stylistic change and sort of rapid development and everything. Every few years, there seemed to be something truly innovative, being introduced.
Oh, there are people who now it's just more all encompassing with the Asian and the Indian and all those kind of influences. But throughout all of those changes, just to sum up, my role was that I was so convinced at the beginning at the picture of the so-called traditional music. And that discipline was so demanding for me. I'm working on it every day in some modest way.
I'm not an eight-hour a day practiceer. But every day, I take out my horn and play and try to get a little better at controlling all the elements. And I get older. Some of them are a little harder to do.
But that's my daily workout, which I love. And then having the advantage of going out to play it for people too, it just makes it a very complete occupation, if you will. How has it been as an occupation overall? Is this like a dream life or?
It is, actually. It's actually, it's in the traveling. Everything else is just something that I look. I have more activities set up for this year than I ever had in one year.
And I look forward to all of it. Could you ever have imagined something like this for yourself, say 60 years ago? Initially, when I, after making the first records, I started to get a lot of response. And I thought that that was the way it was going to be.
And after a few years, that stopped. Like the novelty was over or whatever. I didn't put on enough of a show or whatever it was that for many years, it was pretty lean for me. I teach a little bit and make ends meet barely.
But then in the later years, in the last 20 years or so, I've been able to continue to play. And still, not too much hope is involved. So it's always been the bias to me that was interesting. I attribute a lot of that to my making frequent recordings, have criticized me for that.
But when I go into a record store in one city, I see some recordings. And when I go into another city's store, I see other recordings. And I think that's a result of people hearing a record that they might come out to hear a concert when you come to town. Well I would second that.
And I know that from having played your music and the music of countless other musicians on the radio for many years, it's always, I mean, it's the happiest experience that I know is to hear from a listener saying, who was that? Yeah, that's great. That's a new sound, a new name. I'm not a good person.
Yeah, great. We appreciate you doing that. Sure. Now during those lean years, how did you sustain yourself?
What kept your spirits up? Figuring that I had to get better. So my daily routine was maybe a little more intense to figure out how to be able to get back into the marketplace as it were. I never had the chance to play professionally.
That was my daily routine, trying to just enjoy playing that music. Very little to do because I never learned another profession. I tried working days briefly, but that didn't work out too good. I just had a few little gigs here and there and a few students.
That was it for a quite a long time. Now that must have been a humbling experience where you had come on the scene and made your mark and had associations with Claude Thornhill and Kenton and Miles Davis and... Just a... I wasn't terribly much a hustler.
I've never really had a band, a traveling band of my own. I've taken maybe the easy way by just waiting until someone calls me and invites me to join them. So that might be part of the reason I didn't have agents working for me or calling all the time, trying to get work and things like that. That was the result.
I might have done it differently. I had to do it over again, but that was fair at the time. You have nonetheless over the years had an original and sort of leader-like quality in your work. I mean, you mentioned earlier being, you know, seeing yourself somewhat as a side man or adaptable in a lot of different situations, but nonetheless Lee Conitz isn't very able to lead her.
I'm standing in front of the rhythm section usually and maybe introducing the tunes or whatever. And I have my voice, whatever that is worth. Appreciate it. I regret not having had the whatever you need to get back to what I was able to do.
It's pretty much on the basic band all through the years. I appreciate that very much. But that didn't seem to be my disposition. So I'd like to ask you about one last thing, which is the recordings that you made Bill Holman arrangements with Kenton in 54.
And I think these were subsequent to the tour that you did with Charlie Parker. And I've just been listening to them recently with Bill Russo's passing recently. I've had occasions to pull these out. But do you remember this session and which Lover Man was in my funny valentine?
Oh, yeah. Those were things written tour we did. Charlie couldn't record them. So they asked me to record them.
Mm. Really? They're beautiful. I love great improvised music and I love great post music also.
Everybody's got their thing as long as they can bring people in and present good music. How are they? All right. Well, thank you very much, Lee, for taking the time this afternoon and the photos of you.
Well, thank you. You know, when someone talks about an interview, I'm hoping we don't start with what was your first instrument and all of that. I appreciate your interest very much. You're interested very much.
You're welcome. I appreciate your music so much.