This week on Riverwalk Jazz The Jim Cullum Jazz Band explores the frequent cross- pollination between European art music and swinging jazz. Included on the program: Dick Hyman and John Sheridan interpret Gershwin's “Prelude No.1" in a jazz treatment for two pianos. The Jim Cullum Jazz Band performs a movement from an original composition for jazz band and symphony orchestra, “Playing With Fire." And Jim and the Band play a selection from their jazz transcription of Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess, “The Buzzard Song."
The hour-long radio show can be heard nationwide on the Public Radio International network, on Sirius/XM, and streamed on-demand on the Riverwalk Jazz website.
Almost from the beginning, jazz musicians have been fascinated with European classics. The creative urge to develop a synthesis between jazz and classical music has resulted in a rich and varied body of work. Stride piano pioneer James P. Johnson composed his symphonic tone poem “Yamekraw: A Negro Rhapsody" in 1928 in response to the success five years earlier of Gershwin's composition combining the feel of jazz with symphonic performance, “Rhapsody in Blue." In the Swing Era, bassist John Kirby's sextet relied heavily on classical themes, and then in the 1950s the Modern Jazz Quartet extended this elegant “chamber jazz" approach with original compositions.
Many jazz musicians in the first half of the 20th century looked to the composers of European operetta for melodies as platforms for their jazz improvisations. Sigmund Romberg was famous for his Viennese-style operettas,and a number of his songs became jazz standards. Born in a small town in Hungary in the 1880s, Romberg was about as far removed from the development of jazz in America as he could be. Nonetheless, his composition “Softly as In a Morning Sunrise" made its way into the jazz world via a recording by Artie Shaw, and then later with a version by John Coltrane. Songs by the Viennese operetta master Victor Herbert “Indian Summer" from 1919, and “Gypsy Love Song" through a version by the Bob Crosby Orchestra, have become jazz standards.
Of all the American popular songwriters of the '20s and '30s, George Gershwin—whose songs are a cornerstone of jazz repertoire to this day—was most deeply interested in a true synthesis of American and European musical idioms. His formal concert works such as Concerto in F, the Piano Preludes and An American in Paris, and especially Porgy and Bess are suffused with jazz elements of “blue" tonality and syncopation.
The hour-long radio show can be heard nationwide on the Public Radio International network, on Sirius/XM, and streamed on-demand on the Riverwalk Jazz website.
Almost from the beginning, jazz musicians have been fascinated with European classics. The creative urge to develop a synthesis between jazz and classical music has resulted in a rich and varied body of work. Stride piano pioneer James P. Johnson composed his symphonic tone poem “Yamekraw: A Negro Rhapsody" in 1928 in response to the success five years earlier of Gershwin's composition combining the feel of jazz with symphonic performance, “Rhapsody in Blue." In the Swing Era, bassist John Kirby's sextet relied heavily on classical themes, and then in the 1950s the Modern Jazz Quartet extended this elegant “chamber jazz" approach with original compositions.
Many jazz musicians in the first half of the 20th century looked to the composers of European operetta for melodies as platforms for their jazz improvisations. Sigmund Romberg was famous for his Viennese-style operettas,and a number of his songs became jazz standards. Born in a small town in Hungary in the 1880s, Romberg was about as far removed from the development of jazz in America as he could be. Nonetheless, his composition “Softly as In a Morning Sunrise" made its way into the jazz world via a recording by Artie Shaw, and then later with a version by John Coltrane. Songs by the Viennese operetta master Victor Herbert “Indian Summer" from 1919, and “Gypsy Love Song" through a version by the Bob Crosby Orchestra, have become jazz standards.
Of all the American popular songwriters of the '20s and '30s, George Gershwin—whose songs are a cornerstone of jazz repertoire to this day—was most deeply interested in a true synthesis of American and European musical idioms. His formal concert works such as Concerto in F, the Piano Preludes and An American in Paris, and especially Porgy and Bess are suffused with jazz elements of “blue" tonality and syncopation.
