Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Third Stream

Jazz Meets Classics on WPRB

Woody Herman plays Stravinsky. Benny Goodman plays Bartók. Wynton Marsalis plays Jolivet. Arturo Sandoval plays Arutiunian. Keith Jarrett plays Barber. Jazz artists perform the classics this morning on WPRB, with a few examples of “Third Stream” (Gunther Schuller’s term for a synthesis of classical and jazz) tossed in for good measure.

As an added bonus, Marc Uys, executive director of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, will stop by around 9:00 to talk about a special concert being held tonight at 8 p.m. at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. Violinist Daniel Rowland will appear as soloist and conductor in Astor Piazzolla’s “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires,” which will be interleaved with the concertos of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” Rowland has performed the program many times and has even made a very fine recording of it (from which we will sample).

Otherwise, hepcats put on the dog this morning, as jazz artists perform the classics, from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We’re having ourselves a classical clambake, on Classic Ross Amico.

PHOTO: (left to right) Béla Bartók, Joseph Szigeti and Benny Goodman

September 15, 2016
Jazz Meets Classical on WPRB

Do classical musicians sound too literal when playing jazz? Do jazz musicians sound stiff when interpreting classical? It is my hope that when you tune in tomorrow morning to WPRB you’ll put all such concerns aside. This will be no ordinary crossover program. Let’s face it; there are a lot of really awful crossover albums.

Rather, the playlist will be made up almost exclusively of straight classical music (with perhaps one or two examples of “Third Stream”), interpreted by the great jazz masters, including Paquito D’Rivera, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Keith Jarrett, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, and Arturo Sandoval.

We’ll also hear from genre-defying performers who kept at least one foot in jazz, such as Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin, and Astor Piazzolla.

Speaking of Piazzolla, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra will present a special concert of “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires,” interleaved with Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” tomorrow night at 8 p.m. at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. The violinist and conductor will be Daniel Rowland, who has performed the program many times and has even made a very fine recording of it.

The PSO’s executive director, Marc Uys, will drop by the studio tomorrow morning around 9:00 to tell us about the journey of Piazzolla’s work from bandoneon to violin. He’ll also tell us about some of the other highlights of the PSO season.

The remainder of the show will be as described. The beatniks meet the longhairs, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We’ll be dixie fried and slated for crashville, daddy-o. Focus your audio, on Classic Ross Amico.

September 14, 2016
Gunther Schuller A Third Stream Pioneer

He was a composer, a performer, a conductor, an educator, and an administrator. At 15, he played French horn professionally with the American Ballet Theatre. The next year, he became principal horn of the Cincinnati Symphony. Then he joined the Metropolitan Orchestra, where he played for well over a decade.

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, he was president of the New England Conservatory. He was also involved with Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony, for over 20 years, serving as its artistic director from 1970 to 1984.

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1994.

In addition, he cofounded the Modern Jazz Society. He recorded with Miles Davis. He edited and gave the premiere of Charles Mingus’ final work. He wrote two major books on the history of jazz. To describe what he saw as “a new genre of music, located about halfway between classical music and jazz,” he coined the term “Third Stream.”

An American polymath, he was clearly a man who just loved music.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we honor Gunther Schuller, who died on June 21, at the age of 89.

We’ll hear his Bassoon Concerto from 1982. The work, more of a five-movement suite, manages to synthesize atonality, lyricism, blues and Baroque, with some sly quotations from “The Magic Flute,” “The Rite of Spring” and “Peter and the Wolf” along the way.

Schuller also loved the music of Scott Joplin and did much to contribute to the Joplin revival of the 1970s. He founded the New England Ragtime Ensemble, with which he recorded some bestselling albums of Joplin rags. We’ll hear highlights from Joplin’s opera , “Treemonisha,” which Schuller orchestrated for a revival at Houston Grand Opera.

I hope you’ll join me as we salute Third Stream artist Gunther Schuller, on “A Midsummer Night’s Stream,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

June 28, 2015

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