Move over Armstrong, Ellington, and Basie - despite what Ken Burns says It was Beethoven, Bach and Mozart who set the swinging standard.
In fact, keep the notes but change the rhythms of Bach's "Air on a G String" and you get a foot-tappin' finger snappin' Jazz tune. The composer and pianist Donal Fox is an alumnus of the "Third Stream" school started by Gunther Shuller, with a degree in knocking down walls and blurring lines between jazz and classical. He says the two musics can jam together - pointing out that Classical greats like Mozart, Liszt, and Paganini back in their day would swing on themes for thirty minutes behind orchestras and that Beethoven left piano parts blank in many of his pieces for improvisation and reinterpretation.
So are we all ready to live together under one musical tent? From Baroque to Beebop we're confounding the genre police with Donal Fox. (Hosted By Judy Swallow)
