Line Up
Back when I was a Berklee student, one of my professors introduced me to the works of pianist/composer Lennie Tristano . Lennie's phrasing and articulation was the first thing that I noticed, and it completely knocked me out. I came to have massive respect and admiration for his playing and composing. Lennie's playing is unique in many ways, but the element on which I'll be focusing today is the attack in his technique. It sounds like a very solid and almost hard attack; yet he simultaneously manages to extract a legato texture from the piano. Those two things are seemingly in direct opposition. It seems incongruous that a hard attack could also yield a legato quality, but Lennie does just that. His rhythmic phrasing is something I'll try to describe as being almost straight eighth notes, placed just behind the beat with a rock-solid sense of time. I find it to be both powerful and beautiful. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate Lennie's ...
