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I was wondering how the pianist would approach the distinctive bridge: anticipating the key change, he plays a repeated chord and watches Reid fall into line. It’s sketched and subsequently mostly avoided. (It’s as if Coleman Hawkins’s version never existed.) The melody is at first presented clearly enough. I don’t know a more original “Body and Soul” than the one we have here. Lester shows us his bebop chops as he leads us into some fascinating byways of harmony. Lester and crew play Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple from the Apple” zestfully. It’s a patient performance that self-consciously draws attention to the interaction of the three instruments. In their midst, he injects some tremolos.
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Lester plays a little upward-tending phrase, repeats it a little higher, stops to listen to Reid again, as if to gather energy, and then plays a series of intriguingly oblique block chords. “These Foolish Things” opens with a throbbing note from the magnificent-sounding Reid, who is soon strolling with a swaying rhythm. In the second phrase he hints at the written melody, but he is already improvising after the first three notes. ” I am guessing this was a second take, for the first bars find Lester in mid-thought, as if someone just threw open a window. As we have it, the session opens with “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To. Now From Scratch has arrived, and it is very welcome. Lester has made only a handful of recordings, the first two, Captivating Rhythm and At Liberty, in 1995 when he was close to 50. Regrettably, it also seems to have been how the pianist has approached his performing career.
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It’s a productive artist strategy for him. Lester says of his approach to the piano: “I have no particular technique.… It’s all just waiting for it to happen.” In the documentary, we see him sitting down at the piano, concentrating, waiting, as he says, for something to happen. I am just as impressed that a teenager spent a year memorizing solos before he even got to “Lady Be Good. I spent a year of studies singing Lester Young’s solos at slow speed, then fast, then learning to play them, left hand and right hand, then figuring out left hand accompaniments.” Lester eventually arrived at Young’s 1936 recording of “Lady Be Good,” and it was a revelation: “That was really my life decision, right there.” At the age of 17 he decided to become a musician. The pianist was a teenager when he was sent to Mosca, whom Tristano called “one of the all time great piano players”: “Sal’s first assignment to me at age 16 was to buy ‘Lester Leaps In’ by Count Basie from ’36…. Original though he is, Lester seems, even in his reticence, a direct descendant of Lennie Tristano, who taught pianist Sal Mosca, who then taught Lester. (One is a gratifying alternate take of “These Foolish Things.”) In the documentary, Lester talks briefly about his background.
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In the download I am now listening to, I received five new performances in addition to the original nine. The LP was well received by the jazz press. At the end of the Lester session, filmed for the short documentary Billy Lester: Listening In, Reid goes up to the pianist, squeezes his shoulder, and thanks him for his music. Reid has recorded with Dexter Gordon, Richard Abrams, Lee Konitz, Henry Threadgill and Helen Merrill, and dozens of others. Lester’s beautifully recorded session is made with two stars: bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Matt Wilson. Lester pauses and responds “But I played the melody on the first take.” This is an amusingly dry fellow who is also a deeply serious, idiosyncratic musician. In his notes to the LP version of Billy Lester’s From Scratch, producer Elan Mehler mentions that he pointed out to the pianist, now in his 70s, that on the second takes of the standards he doesn’t play the melody. Pianist Billy Lester is an amusingly dry fellow who is also a deeply serious, idiosyncratic musician.īilly Lester Trio, From Scratch (Newvelle), $65.