There are plenty of recordings of works that fuse classical music and jazz, although it is less common to hear a whole program of them. This 2018 performance by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle has an especially interesting group that offers three less common examples of the genre, all totally different in flavor from one another. Two of the three, Leonard Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs and Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto, were composed for jazz bandleader Woody Herman's Thundering Herd, although only ...
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There are plenty of recordings of works that fuse classical music and jazz, although it is less common to hear a whole program of them. This 2018 performance by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle has an especially interesting group that offers three less common examples of the genre, all totally different in flavor from one another. Two of the three, Leonard Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs and Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto, were composed for jazz bandleader Woody Herman's Thundering Herd, although only the Stravinsky was ultimately performed by the group. The Stravinsky, whose title refers to African influences, receives an especially strong performance here, peppy and dry. Stravinsky's flirtations with jazz date back to the 1910s, but this work arguably represents the deepest fusion, with a spiritual-like melody in its finale. The final work is less familiar; Nazareno, meaning "The Nazarene," is an arrangement by Gonzalo Grau of music from Osvaldo Golijov's La Pasión segun San...
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