Who What Jazz When Where

To dig pianist Billy Lester, who made one of his rare downtown appearances in trio at Cornelia Street Café recently, you have to really listen to his notes. They tend to come in dense clusters, in middle-register runs that seem to move up and down at the same time, with unpredictable syncopation. His inventions are so persuasive they can seem self-sustaining, pre-determined, though they come from spontaneous, concentrated exertions. His climaxes are subtle; they can slip by nearly unnoticed, though in an instant you feel relieved, gratified even.

Lester's music is unique, he sounds like no one else, yet he adheres to some strict conventions-essentially regarding harmony-that disqualify him from the rhetoric of "free jazz" or ecstatic improvisation. Also, his sets are most enjoyable if you know the great American songbook, the tunes of Berlin, Gershwin, Porter, Kern-and who doesn't, as those melodies and their underlying chord progressions have been for almost a century the wellspring of Western popular music?

Three jazz essentials-narrative melody (a story's worth of thrills and chills, conveyed in a sequence of sounds), complex harmony (distinct tonal fields that overlap, intersect and comment on each other over a predetermined course of escape and return) and pliant, breathing rhythm-may be endangered by hip-hop's dominion and present day recording techniques, but will endure as long as any musician uses them to convey personal expression.

Isn't this what jazz players usually do? Yes, basically, although some like Ornette Coleman extend melodies sort of subjectively, the way a person humming or whistling might let their impulses just flow, and others, like John Coltrane in his famous "Giant Steps," dive into the harmonic grid, the field of appropriate notes as defined by the chords, and tear about within, emphasizing systemic connections. As typically practiced in jazz, both approaches rely on vocalizations-conversation-like phrasing, dynamic shadings, nuances of texture approximating laughs, grunts and sobs-to inflect the utterances with emotional meaning.

Lester, in a style initiated by the late pianist Lennie Tristano and advanced by his still-active acolyte Sal Mosca, Lester's longtime teacher, mostly relies on the songs' notes without the verbal shadings, yet with the song's accumulated associations. Fundamentally, he thinks the song while abstracting it harmonically: If you know the tune and can follow his diversions, you experience both at once, and "both" become one.

"I'm still using the basic harmonies of the American songwriters of the 20s, 30s and 40s," Lester says, "but I'm personalizing their chords. I'm still referring to the basic songs, and the idea of swing. In that, I'm very traditional.

"But also, I've spent years making sure that every day is a new day. I had no idea of what I was going to play at Cornelia Street until five minutes before I went onstage, when I realized I wanted to play 'You Stepped Out Of A Dream.' I mean the songs to be springboards for my own creativity. If that's what you heard, I've accomplished what I set out to do."

Lester doesn't offer the tune as we've ever known it, as a cocktail pianist might riffle through an oft-requested hit, or even as a gifted interpreter like Bill Charlap will offer a personal rendition. Lester's music sounds more immediate, less contrived, reflecting his unmediated feelings at the moment his fingers touch the keys. In that, it's like free jazz, or "improv."

But Lester is a 59-year-old piano teacher with three small-label albums and an enthusiastic if select following, who lives with his wife in Yonkers, having raised three kids now making their own ways in the arts. This is reflected in his music being modestly, not flashily, dramatic. He's arrived at mastery through dedication and discipline. If his music seems muted or restrained, listen to the notes: It's accomplished and genuinely rich.

"I hope this doesn't sound pretentious, but I've tried to maintain my life so there's a balance in it. You hear so many horror stories about musicians going off the deep end. I've been patient: I've been waiting a long time to feel that I'm really happy with my music.

"And that's one of the things that first attracted me to jazz, the happiness I heard, say, in Louis Armstrong's music of the 20s, and in Benny Goodman's swing. In Lennie and Sal I also heard a deep seriousness. That told me it was possible to combine the serious and the happy, and make it sound like jazz."