I've gone on at some length here before about Jimmy Giuffre and his percussionless jazz trios, and his album of clarinet & orchestra. In 1959-1961 there was a brief musical fad called "third stream" -- practiced by several other jazzoids -- combining jazz bands & orchestra. Proponents included Giuffre, Paul Desmond, Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans, Don Sebesky, Josef Zawinul, Jacques Loussier, and several others.
As I've mentioned before, I love shit like this that defies categorization.
So, a couple weeks ago I was looking into MJQ albums, who were certainly cross-genre. Found several that I didn't have, and in fact found that there's an "8 albums on 4 CDs" set that includes most of what I didn't have. I ordered it.
One of the albums is called "Third Stream Music" (1960) and includes the Jimmy Giuffre Trio and a string orchestra, in addition to the MJQ.
Unfortunately, this being a cheap boxed set, the album is dubbed from vinyl, with annoying surface noise. Quelle fromage!
Went looking on Apple Music for a better original tape version, and not too surprisingly found it. Downloaded. It's only 36 minutes in length though, so I went looking for something else to fill out a CD-R.
Found a 1961 album called "The Modern Jazz Quartet With Orchestra" which I'd never heard of before. It fits the bill perfectly -- sorta jazz, sorta classical, and all wonderful.
It's kinda sad that my hobby is so solitary. Probably nobody else in the world will ever know how much fun I have had tracking down stuff like this, or why.
Home 