In 1930, an 11-year-old blind clarinetist played in a Chicago brothel; he would go on to record the first free group improvisation in jazz and the first improvised overdubbed recordings. This episode traces Lennie Tristano from the loss of his sight to glaucoma, a music degree earned with his aunt taking notes in his lectures, and his 1946 move to New York, where his advanced harmonies challenged Charlie Parker as an equal.

We break down the 1949 sextet session with Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh that produced Intuition and Digression with no melody, tempo, or key; the loft studio experiments in multi-tracking, tape-speed manipulation, and an atonal piece inspired by Edgar Allan Poe; the purist backlash that called it cheating; and his shift to rigorous teaching. We close with his disdain for 1960s free jazz, the Half Note residency, and his death in 1978 with a single album in print.

• The one rule the musicians agreed on before recording Intuition
• How bouncing between tape machines in 1952 let him duet with himself
• Why his metronome exercises used the slowest possible click
• Singing Charlie Parker solos at half speed before touching an instrument
• His belief that anger should not be played, and what feeling meant to him