Andrew Hill showed up in New York in the early 1960s knowing how to play piano the classical way, but he was impatient with how jazz musicians were doing things. His left hand worked like a drummer's hands—hitting the keys with real force and independence. His right hand played these jagged lines that seemed to dodge the beat instead of landing on it. While other pianists were building solid structures, Hill was sketching quick, sharp shapes and leaving gaps. He'd create uncomfortable moments and never resolve them. This made him exactly the kind of piano player saxophonists wanted when they were trying to find new sounds, and it made him interesting to producers brave enough to put out records that weren't easy to listen to.

His early records for Blue Note, especially Point of Departure (1964) and Compulsion (1965), basically show you how to think differently about what piano could do in modern jazz. Hill didn't use the usual harmonic framework that helped other modernists. Instead, his songs posed questions with no answers, created tensions that never got resolved. Drummers like Roy Haynes and Joe Chambers figured out how to make sense of it rhythmically, even when it sounded like chaos. Saxophonists like Eric Dolphy and Ken McIntyre realized that in Hill's playing they had someone who wouldn't tone down their craziest ideas.

But Hill's uncompromising style probably hurt his career. When Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea moved toward fusion and made things more accessible, Hill kept making his music harder and more formal. In his later years he taught, wrote for orchestras, and recorded here and there—important work that just never got the attention it deserved. His refusal to make his music prettier ended up being both his greatest strength and what kept him from getting famous.

Hearing Hill now, almost twenty years after he died, you realize he was further ahead than even the experimental musicians of his time. His belief that jazz composition could be serious and intellectual while staying spontaneous is still something to argue about. He found a space that's still mostly empty—somewhere between Monk's singular voice and free jazz's complete break with structure. Hill was a hard teacher, but he knew what he was doing.