One of the best, if slightly exasperating, things about taking stock of the year in music is discovering things that you missed previously, which certainly applies to a killer archival title from Uptown Records that dropped quietly in October and that I only became aware of when I started noticing it on multiple year-end lists. Chicago April 1951 is a remarkable live recording of the Lennie Tristano Sextet made during the peak of the pianist’s creativity, when he was working with a rich front line that included his two most famous acolytes: saxophonists Lee Konitz (who will be in town on February 20 to play in a duet with pianist Dan Tepfer at Constellation) and Warne Marsh (trombonist Willie Dennis is also an acolyte, though not on the level of Marsh and Konitz). The 14 tracks on Chicago April 1951 (spread across two discs) were recorded by the owner of Chicago’s Blue Note Jazz Club (located at the corner of Madison and Dearborn) and aside from the crappy piano Tristano was forced to use (which occasionally sounds closer to a harpsichord than a piano), the sound quality is quite remarkable and clear, even if the rhythm section of bassist Burgher “Buddy” Jones and drummer Dominic “Mickey” Simonetta sound rather muted.
Today’s playlist:
