Duos with Lee

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Duos with Lee
Studio album by Lee Konitz and Dan Tepfer

Publication
(s)

2009

Label (s) Sunnyside Records

Format (s)

CD

Genre (s)

Modern jazz , postbop

Title (number)

13

occupation

production

Dan Tepfer

Studio (s)

Sear Sound, NY and Studio de Meudon

chronology
Konitz Plays Konitz
(2007) 		Duos with Lee Live at the Village Vanguard
(2010)
Template: Info box music album / maintenance / parameter error

Duos with Lee is a jazz album by Lee Konitz and Dan Tepfer . The recordings, which were made on December 13, 2008 and March 5, 2009 in New York's Sear Sound Studio and in Studio de Meudon , France, were released on July 28, 2009 on Sunnyside Records .

background

The 24-year-old pianist Dan Tepfer was introduced to the then 79-year-old alto saxophonist Lee Konitz in 2006 shortly after he arrived in New York. The contact came about through Tepfer's French mentor Martial Solal , who often worked with Konitz and recorded several duo albums with Konitz in the 1970s and 1980s. Just a few months later, Tepfer and Konitz gave their first duo concert in the New York Jazz Gallery .

The cover of Joyce Kilmer's volume of poems Trees and Other Poems , published in 1914

The young Dan Tepfer then worked from the beginning of 2007 before these studio sessions (recorded in December 2008 and March 2009) as a sideman with Lee Konitz because the experienced alto saxophonist was attracted by Tepfer's creative, open-minded approach to accompaniment, wrote Ken Dryden. This was only Tepfer's second CD under his name; for the duo session, Tepfer and Konitz recorded a number of standards and improvised pieces which they called "Elande" (an anagram of their first names). In Dryden's opinion, her ten “Elande” duo improvisations differ greatly in character and are conceived in ten different keys, which last from little more than a minute to just under four and a half minutes and in which the two complement each other. Sometimes a song that inspired an “Elande” might pop up briefly, like “Elande No. 10 (Free for Paree)” which eventually worked its way into Jerome David Kern's “The Last Time I Saw Paris”. Tepfer's “Merka Tikva” is a well-composed work with a haunting melody, while Tepfer's “No Lee” is a solo improvisation that, according to Dryden, simultaneously appears to be a fully formed composition. Tepfer and Konitz close with an exotic treatment of "Trees", a song from the 1920s, written by the poet Joyce Kilmer .

Track list

  • Dan Tepfer, Lee Konitz: Duos With Lee (Sunnyside SSC 1219)
  1. Elande No. 1 (F #) 2:23
  2. Elande No. 2 (Bb) 2:44
  3. Elande No. 3 (A) 2:03
  4. Elande No. 4 (B) 2:35
  5. Elande No. 5 (D) 1:13
  6. Elande No. 6 (G #) 1:27
  7. Merka Tiva 7:09
  8. Elande No.7 (F) 1:57
  9. Elande No. 8 (C) 1:59
  10. Elande No. 9 (E) 2:08
  11. Elande No. 10 (Free for Paree) 4:21
  12. No Lee 3:53
  13. Trees 6:01
  • The compositions are by Dan Tepfer (1 to 12), Joyce Kilmer (13), Lee Konitz (1 to 6, 8 to 11)

reception

: Dan Tepfer 2010

Ken Dryden gave the album four stars and wrote that it was probably too much to hope for a follow-up duo recording between Dan Tepfer and Lee Konitz, even though listeners have seen the two perform together in live settings are familiar with their incredible chemistry together. "Highly recommended."

In her short briefing for Citizen Jazz , Dianne Gastellu, on the other hand, addresses an asymmetry between the two musicians: In addition to Lee Konitz “with a powerful fragility” who is “truly a 'holy monster' of jazz”, a 50-year-old pianist kicks “with a very classic game. ”The exchange between the two artists was“ touching and beautiful ”, but Tepfer's game was“ a little too respectful ”so that it didn't“ shiver ”.

Raul D'Gama Rose, who reviewed the album for All About Jazz , gave him 4½ (out of five) stars and felt reminded of Miles Davis ' Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959) - not in the historical sense, but in the very probably similar way in which this session took place, in which ideas must have flowed almost incessantly. Certainly none of the musicians had that in mind; both are full of their own musical inventions that must have been hard to stop once they got going.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lee Konitz & Dan Tepfer - snapshots of an unusual duo. Jazz Echo, July 2, 2018, accessed April 17, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Review of Ken Dryden's album at Allmusic (English). Retrieved April 18, 2020.
  3. ^ Dan Tepfer, Lee Konitz: Duos With Lee at Discogs
  4. ↑ In 2018, another album with the same line-up was released, Decade .
  5. ^ Dan Tepfer & Lee Konitz: Duos with Lee. citizenjazz.com, September 11, 2011, accessed April 18, 2020 .
  6. ^ Raul D'Gama Rose: Dan Tepfer / Lee Konitz: Duos with Lee. All About Jazz, August 8, 2009, accessed April 17, 2020 .