Good point, but Gershwin’s music is missing one of the key ingredients in Third Stream, improvisation; according to Schuller’s definition. As you often point out just because there is improvisation does not make it jazz; probably one of the reasons that, as pryso points out, Schuller did not want to refer to Third Stream as TS Jazz. Conversely, just because it has elements of Classical and Jazz (Gershwin) does not make it TS. Personally, while I think that Schuller’s reasons for giving this fusion of two musics a new title was well intended I think it points to how the preoccupation with titles and with locking music into rigid genre designations can simply confuse matters; and I suspect it was greatly a reaction to purists’ objections to the perceived “contamination” of one genre with elements of the other. Using Schuller’s own definition Ellington’s large scale orchestral works, for example, would qualify for TS designation much more than Gershwin’s.
pryso makes some really interesting comments that touch on some of this with his account of how he learned to appreciate Classical by recognizing its “ties” to Jazz. Excellent observation since I think that sometimes a listener’s reaction to music is a kind of knee jerk reaction to the genre based on a preconceived notion of what the genre is supposed to be. I think that if there were a shift, or at least an openness, to focusing more on the common ground in all music and it’s performance that musical tastes would broaden. Then the focus can be on the quality of the performance or how well the composer exploits the things that “tie” the different genres and which may be familiar to the listener from experience with a favorite genre. Is a rhythmic groove by Miles’ rhythm section “better” than a great orchestra playing Bach? Does the presence of strings on a recording like Bird With Strings diminish the greatness of some of Bird’s very best perfomances on record? Take the exact same string arrangements, but have a Hammond B3 play them instead. Does the music all of a sudden become more “jazz”?
Anyway, great posts all.
Some fairly recent TS from the great clarinet virtuoso Eddie Daniels. The album is “Breakthrough” and I’m almost shocked that there is only this cut from it on the Tube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jHxCm9G54ZQ
pryso makes some really interesting comments that touch on some of this with his account of how he learned to appreciate Classical by recognizing its “ties” to Jazz. Excellent observation since I think that sometimes a listener’s reaction to music is a kind of knee jerk reaction to the genre based on a preconceived notion of what the genre is supposed to be. I think that if there were a shift, or at least an openness, to focusing more on the common ground in all music and it’s performance that musical tastes would broaden. Then the focus can be on the quality of the performance or how well the composer exploits the things that “tie” the different genres and which may be familiar to the listener from experience with a favorite genre. Is a rhythmic groove by Miles’ rhythm section “better” than a great orchestra playing Bach? Does the presence of strings on a recording like Bird With Strings diminish the greatness of some of Bird’s very best perfomances on record? Take the exact same string arrangements, but have a Hammond B3 play them instead. Does the music all of a sudden become more “jazz”?
Anyway, great posts all.
Some fairly recent TS from the great clarinet virtuoso Eddie Daniels. The album is “Breakthrough” and I’m almost shocked that there is only this cut from it on the Tube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jHxCm9G54ZQ