Lennie Tristano
Descent Into the Maelström

The first time I listened to this album, I was struck by its Sly beauty.  

Lennie Tristano's piano playing is a creature that is very difficult to describe, as many are its faces and its nuances. But listening to it is an experience I would call "shamanic," meaning by this term the ability of his music to make us roam in circles like boats on the sea, and from time to time give us the opportunity to dock, even for a very short time, on mysterious and dark islands. The particular aura of this character is visible right from the album cover: dark colors, a face with strongly marked features, an enigmatic expression.

Blind since childhood, Lennie Tristano was born in 1919 in Chicago, to Italian parents from Aversa (Caserta).  He played the piano and other instruments from a very young age, immediately showing an innate and majestic musical ability. As the years passed, he began playing in many dixieland clubs in Chicago until he moved to New York in the '40s. Brilliant and intriguing, he soon began to mingle and play with artists of the caliber of Lee Konitz, Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Bud Powell. It was this latter pianist that Tristano pointed to as his great inspiration. But his music is something that even transcends be-bop, at that time the most innovative and unique form of jazz around. It is music that goes behind things, an approach that, as in the case of Miles Davis or Robert Wyatt, tends the ear to explore more hidden, but also more genuine paths. Tristano nevertheless loves and thus plays jazz, that's for sure; and certainly does not indulge in sterile avant-garde forms. His music, however, results incredibly unique: I would call it a mix of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, but as if it were all played by a black magic wizard on an old piano. Creating strange musical alchemy formulas.

Of great temporal and musical importance is the track that gives the title to the album and opens it: "Discesa nel Maelström." It dates back to 1953, while the entire album is actually a collection of recordings made between 1951 and 1965. And the track in question is a great example of free-jazz ante litteram, preceding by at least 5-6 years the works of Ornette Coleman. The title is inspired by the story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. The protagonist of the story is accompanied by a guide, who escorts him to a very high Norwegian cliff overlooking the sea, to make him observe the enormous oceanic vastness below, in which a strange phenomenon of a giant whirlpool called "Maelström" takes place. Subsequently, the guide, a local fisherman, recounts how he once survived after getting caught with his large vessel inside the whirlpool. And how he could see hell from two steps away. And Tristano's piano is so mysterious, icy, frantically impetuous and rotating that it makes you feel that story right under your skin. The notes dart and stop, then resume again, squealing and spraying like wave foam on the wood of the ship. It is a sad search, a painful journey into his (our) personal Maelström, which perhaps remains the darkest and deepest abyss we can deal with. From the story:

"Though feeling dizzy, I strained my vision and saw a wide stretch of ocean. To right and to left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay, as if it were the outworks of the universe, huge wreaths of black, rocky, fantastic mountains... "

The album consists of 10 tracks, the first 6 of solo piano, and we can divide it more precisely into four ideal parts:

1. The opening track;
2. Tracks 2 and 3, "Dream-Paris" and "Image-Paris": pieces of "classic" jazz, let's say in the "Woody Allen" style, but maintaining a mysterious aura within them, with a continuous alternation of minor and major chords that reverberate between themselves;
3. Tracks 4, 5, 6: three different versions of the same piece, the difference being in how the bass parts are played, faster in take 1, and progressively slower in takes 2 and 3. The result is slyly fascinating; first the oppression of the bass seems more elusive, then it becomes more and more evident, like an evolution towards darkness, again toward that abyss. The high notes, on the other hand, are fast, ringing, shrill: here there is the whole description of man, light and shadow, Yin and Yang;
4. Tracks 7, 8, 9, 10: here Tristano is accompanied by the bass and a very lively drum. We are faced with pure and simple be-bop, more or less sped up; the piano moves through powerful flights and sinister swings. It all ends with a drum that I would once again describe as "shamanic."

To add that the recordings are old and not impeccable, and the music seems to almost come out of an old gramophone in an abandoned house, creating an even more noir and sinister atmosphere.            

Anyone who has had the patience to read this far, I thank you. Perhaps it will provide the opportunity to get to know better this very strange artist, with supreme technique and capable of really playing everything with everyone. Charlie Parker called him "The Great Acclimatizer." I call him the great "Black Chameleon."