Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday November 9th, 2011 with Bernard Stepien
Jazz & Classical music part I - Matt Haimovitz - Claudia Hommel's Jazz Fauré Ensemble

This week and the next couple of weeks, we will be exploring the relationship between Jazz and classical music. Classical music and Jazz have crossed their paths many times since the '20s. It mostly got started by classical musicians that were curious to see how Jazz was made. In these early days, one thing was established: it was not the notes. Effectively it was proven that classical musicians playing Jazz charts still sounded like classical musicians while Jazz musicians playing classical charts still sounded like Jazz musicians. Contemporary classical composers such as Igor Stravinsky pushed the curiosity even further by incorporating Jazz elements in their compositions. Later, things somewhat changed. Clarinetist Benny Goodman switched to classical music when the Swing music era was over. The '60s brought their lot of revolutions and experimentations, one of them was to rethink this classical music - Jazz relationship altogether. French pianist Jacques Loussier thought that Johann-Sebastian Bach was an early Jazz musician and played his music note for note and proved that it took little efforts to make it naturally swing. American pianist Dave Brubeck explored the fusion between classical compositions and Jazz and Blues improvisation.They had one thing in common: to be Jazz musicians. This year, another movement started and is worth of note: classical musicians play Jazz in a classical way. We all know what Jazz is. A music that is mainly improvised, that uses unusual harmonies, that has specific ways of phrasing, but more above all, it swings. It may be harder, especially for a Jazz musician, to define classical music. It is mostly composed, has large structural elements, uses contrasts between levels of sound, the famous pianissimo and fortissimo but more important, it does not swing. Tonight, we will have a look at two interesting projects: Montreal cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O'Riley for a collaboration that blurs the boundaries between classical and pop that includes two compositions of Jazz Fusion musician John McLaughlin. Here the intent seems to be to transform Jazz into classical music altogether but also introduce classical improvisation in the process. Claudia Hommel's The Jazz Fauré Ensemble that fuses both very romantic and ascetic compositions of 19th century composer and musician Gabriel Fauré with straight ahead Jazz. Fauré was known to be among one of the first classical musician to explore new harmonies, precisely those that Jazz uses for a long time. Here the exercise consists in playing Fauré's music the way it always was and have a Jazz combo playing strictly Jazz behind. the result is surprisingly.