Leonard Joseph Tristano (19 March1919 - 18 November1978) was a jazz pianist and composer. He performed in the Cool jazz, bebop, post bop and Avant-garde jazz genres. He remains a somewhat overlooked figure in jazz history, but his enormous originality and dazzling work as an improviser have long been appreciated by knowledgable jazz fans; in addition, his work as a jazz educator meant that he has exerted a substantial indirect influence on jazz, through figures such as Lee Konitz and Bill Evans. Life Tristano was born in Chicago into an Italian immigrant family. He was blind from infancy and studied piano and music theory from pre-teen years, graduating from his home town's American Conservatory of Music in 1943. Tristano's interest in jazz inspired a move to New York City in 1946. His advanced grasp of harmony pushed his music beyond even the complexities of the contemporary bebop movement, though Tristano was always explicit about ac

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