Current Lee

The flurry of comments, reminiscences and stories stimulated by the Konitz And Kenton post in the previous exhibit leads me to suspect that there may be considerable interest in Konitz’s current work. Jim Brown’s comment about that item described the effect on him of Konitz’s new quartet with a rhythm section of young European musicians who, in Jim’s words, spur Konitz to “new heights of creativity.”

Since the Rifftides staff is on the eve of a vacation of at least several days and blogging will be infrequent, if at all, we’re going to leave you with an hour-long video of Konitz and a band of colleagues who are decades younger—chronologically. He turned 85 on October 13. The pianist is Florian Weber, the bassist Jeff Denson, the drummer Ziv Ravitz. Someone who identifies himself as doriangrey27 uploaded the video to YouTube. He (or, who knows? she) has our gratitude.

The concert was at the Internationale Jazzwoche in Burghausen, Wackerhalle, Germany, on March 15th of this year. Konitz has played the pieces in this program for years, always managing to find in them ways to surprise his audiences and himself. At the beginning, we are treated to his style as MC and raconteur.

doriangrey 27’s YouTube channel has several hundred interesting concert videos.