Lee Konitz: Phone Interview with Me and My Grad Students

Alto saxophonist Lee Konitz (1927-2020) was a brilliant musician, and also an original and witty person. I first met him in 1979, and over the following years we performed together and spoke on a number of occasions. I’ll post my memories of him another time.

Today I want to share with you an interview that I conducted with Lee over the phone on April 18, 2014. As you may know, I founded the world’s only degree in jazz history, a masters program at Rutger University’s campus in Newark, New Jersey. I directed this program from its inception in 1997 until I retired in January 2018. (At this writing, the program no longer exists, and there are no plans to revive it.) Over the years, I often had well-known guests in my graduate seminars, in person and by telephone (and in later years by Facetime). Usually the guest and I knew each other, and I would speak with him or her a bit, and then open the floor to questions from my graduate students—usually between 10 and 15 people. In this case, most of the interview consists of Lee answering their questions. You will hear from Steve Beck—who I thank for sharing this recording with us—as well as Terry McManus, Adam Melville, Jeremiah Briley, Daniel Peterson, and someone named Andrew (sorry, I don’t recall his surname).

Lee discusses the term “cool,” the influences of Pres and Bird, and much more. You may be surprised at 17:00 when he says that in many cases he did not name his own tunes. For example, he tells us, “Subconscious-Lee,” perhaps Lee’s best known composition (you can listen to it below), was named by the bassist on the original recording, Arnold Fishkin. As I will detail in future posts, it is extremely common for jazz artists to record untitled tunes, which then have to be named by themselves, other musicians, or the producer.

OK! Enjoy the interview:

And here is “Subconscious-Lee.” It uses the chords of “What Is This Thing Called Love?”:

The information is: Lee Konitz (as) Lennie Tristano (p) Billy Bauer (g) Arnold Fishkin (b) Shelly Manne (d), New York, January 11, 1949.

You will enjoy reading what Konitz has to say in the book of conversations with British philosopher and jazz journalist Andy Hamilton. (I was an editor of the book.) It also includes some transcribed solos.

See you again soon!

All the best,
Lewis