On the menu chez Konitz, this album is definitely the house special: the clunking “Lee” pun in the title; the ritual pilgrimage through a small clutch of favourite standards and tunes like Tristano’s “317 East 32nd” and Konitz’s theme-song “Subconscious-Lee”; the intimate duet situation, quiet dynamics and unemphatic tempos. Konitz plays very softly, sometimes just above a murmur; his lines have a lalling, run-together sound, as the notes of phrases are never separately articulated. What remains in my ear after listening to these tracks is not the individual ingenuities of phrase, but Konitz’s obsessive return to the identical gesture: a long, usually high held note delivered with a slow, light vibrato, the effect being like a mobile slowly turning in the air. The device ends virtually every cadence, and this is why the emotional content of these performances is curiously hard to gauge: for most players such notes would bear much of the emotional weight of an improvisation; here they are an inevitable part of the cadential pattern.

The standout track on Live-Lee is its least typical and most directly emotional, the original ballad “Gundula” (named after Konitz’s wife). It has darkened in tone from when he (first?) recorded it on The Sound of Surprise (1999); there is a new and striking contrast between the conventionally lyrical A section, and the veiled, slightly ominous B section. Konitz’s readings of the ballads “Easy Living” and “If You Could See Me Now” are also worth close attention, though their impact is quite other from “Gundula”: these are closely annotated editions of familiar melodies, digressing from them and illuminating them by turns. “Cherokee” is given a notably spacious, allusive reading, introduced by an enigmatic a cappella Konitz solo which is his most densely packed statement of the session. It was presumably edited, as it appears to begin with the B section, though Konitz’s characteristic feints and false alarms are legion throughout – he has always been fond of telescoping an oncoming chord sequence, or stealing from elsewhere in a tune to help patch an entirely different spot. (There is a particularly baffling turnaround at one point: possibly this misled the editor?) Another mild oddity of the disc concerns what’s credited as “Subconscious-Lee.” On this track, Broadbent’s introduction outlines the tune of the ur-text “What Is This Thing Called Love?”; he then states the head, which is actually “Hot House” (evidently taking Konitz by surprise, as he misses the first note). At the end of Broadbent’s solo feature the pianist returns to “What Is This Thing”; Konitz counters by (at last!) playing “Subconscious-Lee,” but Broadbent plays “Hot House” under him anyway in counterpoint. Though the boundaries between the tunes are evidently fluid for Konitz, this small push-pull drama is nonetheless revealing in its fashion.

Live-Lee was recorded at Los Angeles’ Jazz Bakery in 2000; as it happens, this is where his Blue Note discs Alone Together and Another Shade of Blue were recorded three years earlier. Alan Broadbent’s calm contrapuntalism makes for an intriguing comparison with Konitz’s partner on the earlier occasion, the young pianist Brad Mehldau. Mehldau’s playing on that date was flawed by a trigger-happy reliance on patterns, and his two-handed forays were offputtingly mechanical; by contrast, Broadbent’s contrapuntalism always finds him at his warmest and most spontaneous. That said, Konitz was playing more crisply and with less mannerism on the date with Mehldau and Haden: there Konitz’s alto was as direct and linear as a ballpoint pen. On Live-Lee he seems less willing to let go of a handful of notes, more inclined to juggle them indefinitely.

In the end I can’t but recommend Live-Lee to Konitz followers, even if I’d place it in the second rank of his albums rather than the first. Fans of Broadbent – a staggeringly underrated pianist – will also welcome the chance to hear him away from Quartet West or the Diana Krall juggernaut.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, November 2003