Lee Konitz and charlie parker

"When I came to New York with Claude Thornhill in ’48, I went right to Fifty-second Street and listened to Charlie Parker. He sounded great, but very familiar to me, and I was wondering why that was at first. Then I realized he was playing vocabulary that I’d already heard on the records – but it was fantastically played and realized. As a “composer,” he conceived of these great phrases, and fit them together in the most logical way, and played them until they came alive – and then decided to depend on what really communicated with his audience."[1] - Lee Konitz

Lee Konitz, much like his playing, is not afraid to shy away from bold statements. This will be the first post of a series that dives into the question of whether Charlie Parker was an improvisor, or as Konitz claims, a "composer" who could manipulate and realize his ideas in a fantastic way.

Before we begin, I would like to look at one more quote from the same book where Konitz shares his view about the prospect of honestly spontaneous improvisation. Here's the question as it was posed to Konitz; followed by his thought.

How do you get beyond playing things that are in the "muscular memory" - phrases that have been learned and are then unconsciously repeated?

By believing that it’s possible to do it, first of all, and wanting to do it. I have complete faith in the spontaneous process. I think most people think that can be very naïve, and that you do your improvising at home, and when you go out, you play prepared material, so the paying customers don’t get short-changed…We learn to play through things that feel good at the time of discovery. They go into the “muscular memory” and are recalled as a matter of habit. If I know a pattern on a [chord] progression that feels good at the time of discovery, every time I come to that place I could play that pattern, knowing it works, rather than making a fresh try. Up to a point this is the choice you make with a working vocabulary – how much you want to flex those ideas.[2]

​To be clear, Konitz seems to view improvisers as falling into one of three categories. “Prepared playing” or “professional performance” which he likens to Oscar Peterson or James Moody, musicians “who have a routine that wows the audience.”[3] “Real improvisers” who follow a much more intuitive approach akin to Konitz’s thought process. He also describes a third improvisational approach between prepared playing and intuitive improvisation, the “compositional” approach of Charlie Parker or John Coltrane, which has a more specific vocabulary. “Konitz is not denying that Parker and Coltrane are improvising. He is just saying that they adopt a different approach to improvising; with Moody and Peterson he would be more sever.”[4] Andy Hamilton then goes on the elaborate his own opinion “I believe that Konitz’s approach, in avoiding licks and focusing on melody, is more purely or more ‘really’ improvisational.”[5]

Is Konitz’s approach to improvisation really more “pure” than Parker’s? Does Konitz avoid playing “licks” (preconceived/practiced melodic ideas) thereby thinking along a different improvisational thought process than Parker?

The only way to answer these questions is by analyzing improvisations by both players with regard to repetitiveness and creative thought process.

​
[1] Andy Hamilton, Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser’s Art (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press), 103.
[2] Ibid, 109.
[3] Ibid, 102.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.

I'll start today by looking at how Charlie Parker improvised over the bridge to Cherokee on three different recordings taken from three different years.

Notice how Parker uses the same motive over the first four measures in 1942 as he does in 1945. In measures 5-9 the 1942 and 43' solos seem very similar in structure. Is improvisation over the last four bars of the bridge appears to vary between the three different recordings. However, there does appear to be some evidence, at least as far as the first half of the bridge is concerned, that Parker may have been playing off pre-composed ideas, as per Konitz's claim.

In future posts, we will look at full solos from both Parker and Konitz and apply altered rules derived from Schenkerian analysis principals to evaluate what preconceived thought may have gone into both Konitz and Parker's improvisations.

I would love to hear your comments, feel free to leave them below!