This absorbing package, previously unreleased apart from 10 minutes out of the total 357, almost dwarves everything else that has been issued under Tristano’s own name, including LPs and singles. As such, it probably deserves detailed musical analysis rather than the following brief description. What we have here is: roughly an hour each of the pre-1950 piano-guitar-bass trios and the sextet created by adding drums and the horns of Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh; an hour of Lennie unaccompanied, most of it from the same early-1960s period as his album The New Tristano; an hour of the mid-1950s piano-bass-drums trio with the late Peter Ind; an hour of duos and trios with bassist Sonny Dallas; and a final disc divided between the latter trio live (with Konitz and Zoot Sims added for one standard) and an early Konitz-Marsh group playing ‘free’ in 1948.

The main factor is, of course, the highly identifiable piano of the leader, whose approach usually involved improvising on a selection of slightly disguised standard chord-sequences, displaying his breathless single-note lines with accentuation across barlines and frequently against the expected harmonies (what later became known as “side-slipping”). When no bassist was present, Tristano often created a 4/4 bass-line with his left hand, which made the departures of the right hand that much more noticeable. When the early sextet played live, with the horns of Konitz and Marsh using the same approach, the results were remarkable and previously unheard at such length on record. One word of warning: Unless you’re a dedicated Tristanophile, don’t start with Disc 2 because the early trios with Bauer include transfers from wire recordings of very uneven quality, and their remastering varies wildly. From Disc 2 onwards, even the two half-discs also from wire recordings, the sound is wholly acceptable and is a recommended subject for study.