Collection: Lennie Tristano

Lennie Tristano was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and teacher of jazz improvisation. Born March 19, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois, he became totally blind as a child but began playing piano in taverns at age 12. He studied at the American Conservatory of Music, earning bachelor's and master's degrees before moving to New York City in 1946. He played with leading bebop musicians including Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and formed his own small bands displaying contrapuntal interaction of instruments, harmonic flexibility and rhythmic complexity.

His quintet in 1949 recorded 'Intuition' and 'Digression', the first free group improvisations in jazz history, nearly a decade before Ornette Coleman. Tristano's innovations continued in 1951 with the first overdubbed, improvised jazz recordings, and in 1953 when he recorded 'Descent into the Maelstrom', an atonal improvised solo piano piece based on motif development rather than harmonies. In 1951, he founded the first jazz school in New York. He died on November 18, 1978, leaving behind an influential legacy as both performer and pioneering jazz educator whose methods helped shape modern jazz pedagogy.