whiskey-aged vocalist. There may be a
touch of irony in several of the song selections - why else tackle chestnuts like
Imagination, That Old Feeling, and the bynow-hackneyed Melancholy Baby? - leading to moments of an uncharacteristic expressionistic harshness and a few phrases
born out of frustration. But when things
click, they are marvelous. All The Things

ently stated pulse, there are always open
spaces in which Konitz may perch, plummet, and soar. With bassist Dallas walking heroically around and through the
chords without overly asserting them,
Konitz is free to follow the implicit chord
changes of these songs, alter them, sustain them, suggest new ones, or ignore
them completely. He does all of the above.

YouAre builds gradually and only finds the
melody at the very end (an old Tristano
trick). Pennies From Heaven is used as a
canvas for a collage of free-associative
quotes and comments. He stretches the
melody of What's New like taffy, shrewdly
seduces Embraceable You with a laid-back
demeanor the antithesis of Bird's full-frontal assault, double-tracks altos on I'm Getting Sentimental Over You as if trying to
trip himself up.

The key word here is "free." Tristano
taught that only with a complete, almost
subconscious, understanding of a song's
structural parameters could a soloist ignore the form at hand and invent something musical from deep within his or her
own consciousness - the true meaning
of improvisation. For Konitz in this case
the material is so familiar to him - I Remember You, All Of Me, I'll Remember April,
Out Of Nowhere, and the like - both in
their original state and as Tristano-style
reconfigurations, that he seldom touches
upon the actual themes. Thus the combination of rhythmic flexibility, harmonic
ambiguity, and melodic (not thematic)
development and variation here affords
Konitz a freedom he had possibly never
previously experienced.
(Outside, of
course, of his earlier experiments in freedom with Tristano and friends.) Challenged to the maximum, Konitz responds
with improvisations that are every bit as
free as anything Ornette Coleman was

TheComplete
Guideto
Manufacturing
Packaging
Mastering
Compact
Discs

I

Had a selection of these tracks been issued at the time, the album would have
been another plus on the credit side of
Lee's ledger, but little more. It was obvious that something was missing. That
something was Elvin Jones. About a week
later Elvin replaced Stabulas behind the
drums, and magic happened. Altering accents, shifting beats, Jones sometimes
gives the impression of two drummers
playing at once, but thanks to his supple
handling of an implied and not consist-

16 CODA