Lee Konitz obit

Lee Konitz, Alto Saxophonist Who Exemplified Jazz's Imperative to Make It New, Is Dead at 92

He was not on the list.

Lee Konitz, an exemplar of modern jazz improvisation, and arguably the most influential alto saxophone soloist after bebop progenitor Charlie Parker, died on Wednesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. He was 92.

His son, Josh Konitz, said the cause was pneumonia, related to COVID-19.

Konitz was one of the last jazz musicians of his era still in active circulation: his career has hummed along, apparently impervious to popular trends or external pressure, for the last 75 years. A sound as individual as his can’t be reduced to a buzzword, but he was commonly associated with the “cool” school in jazz. He embodied the idea, as he once put it, that “it’s possible to get the maximum intensity in your playing and still relax.”

His first major exposure came in 1947, in an impressionistic big band led by Claude Thornhill; he can be heard soloing with striking promise and originality on Gil Evans’ arrangements of  "Yardbird Suite” and other Charlie Parker themes. Through his association with Evans, he was part of the coterie involved in Miles Davis’ historic Birth of the Cool sessions in 1949. His playing on the eerie coda of Moon Dreams” remains one of that album’s most unconventional moments.

But Konitz’s pivotal association, from 1943 intermittently until 1964, was with the blind pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano, creator of an enigmatic, almost cult-like offshoot of bebop known as the Tristano School.

Doggedly advocating a theory of improvisation that eschewed all predetermined licks and patterns, Tristano taught his disciples — Konitz and tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh chief among them — to focus on intuitive melodic shapes and rhythmic displacement within the steady 4/4 beat. Though the Tristano school ultimately proved too insular and constricting for Konitz, he remained devoted to many aspects of Tristano’s philosophy throughout his career.

Tristano did not approve of Konitz playing with a range of musicians in ever-changing settings, but for the alto saxophonist, this became a central mission. His hunger for musical conversation led him to amass one of the largest discographies in all of jazz (very much unlike Tristano).

But save for a few short periods, and despite remaining prolific well into old age, Konitz didn’t lead a steady working group. He simply played with everyone. Remarking on a younger musician he admired, one with a well-rehearsed band and an ever-growing book of music, Konitz once said: “Bravo. I don’t seem to need that in my life.”

He often played in duos or trios, or alone: on Lone-Lee (1974), probably the most intimate document of his sound that exists, he plays “The Song Is You” unaccompanied for nearly 40 minutes, and then “Cherokee” for nearly 20. He sought meaning and human connection from every encounter; ego was not a factor. “A good solo doesn’t care who plays it,” he once said.

His ethic as a wanderer and committed listener had a major impact on the younger musicians he sought out. “I always think of Lee as a Zen master,” Dan Tepfer, a pianist and frequent Konitz duo partner, said in a 2012 interview. “There’s nothing keeping [him] from responding to what’s actually going on in the moment.”

Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner once referred to Konitz’s “jarring rhythmic sense,” in an interview with Ted Panken for DownBeat. “Phrases are never in groups of two or four or eight beats or notes,” Turner added, “but in sevens or nines or fives or sixes. His lines are also very involved, long, connected, extremely lyrical.”

Particularly in his later years, Konitz preferred to play standards — and well-worn ones at that, such as “Stella By Starlight” and “I’ll Remember April.” In the liner notes to his 1957 Atlantic release The Real Lee Konitz, he wrote: “I feel that in improvisation, the tune should serve as a vehicle for musical variations…. For this reason I have never been concerned with finding new tunes to play. I often feel that I could play and record the same tunes over and over and still come up with fresh variations.”

Still, he addressed a wide body of original music over the years. An Image: Lee Konitz with Strings (1958) finds him playing ambitious, Third Stream-type compositions by Bill Russo. Other examples include a deliciously odd 1977 trio encounter with pianist Paul Bley and guitarist Bill Connors called Pyramid; trumpeter Kenny Wheeler’s 1997 album Angel Song; and a series of refined collaborations with saxophonist and composer Ohad Talmor from the mid-2000s on, the most recent of which, Old Songs New, was released last fall.

Konitz himself composed relatively little, and what he did write, following the practice of Parker  and Tristano, were mostly contrafacts — melodies based on existing chord changes. His best-known piece, “Subconscious-Lee,” was based on Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love.” (Here is televised footage of Konitz and Marsh performing the song in 1958, with partners including Billy Taylor on piano and Mundell Lowe on guitar.)