Friday Playlist #19: Third Stream Music

Third Stream technically refers to the fusion of jazz with classical. It was a movement in jazz music for two seconds, but the implications of what it means are much, much broader and can be felt all across both classical and jazz music all throughout the century. The truth is that Third Stream can truly be the fusion of any popular idiom with the classical tradition. But for the purposes of this list, we’ll stick to jazz-influenced classical, and classical-influenced jazz.


According to Gunther Schuller - this is what third stream is not:

• It is not jazz with strings.
• It is not jazz played on 'classical' instruments.
• It is not classical music played by jazz players.
• It is not inserting a bit of Ravel or Schoenberg between be-bop changes—nor the reverse.
• It is not jazz in fugal form.
• It is not a fugue played by jazz players.
• It is not designed to do away with jazz or classical music; it is just another option amongst many for today’s creative musicians

To this day, Scott Joplin may still be the purest example of how this works. 

From the Classical Side:

Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin

The Creation of the World by Darius Milhaud

Ebony Concerto by Igor Stravinsky (written for Woody Herman and his orchestra)

Piano Concerto in G by Maurice Ravel

Le Jazz by Bohuslav Martinu

Jazz Symphony by George Antheil

Four Piano Blues by Aaron Copland

Johnny Strikes Up by Ernest Krenek

Jazz Suites by Dimitri Shostakovich

Derivations by Morton Gould

The Age of Anxiety by Leonard Bernstein

Conversation by Gunther Schuller

The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill/Berthold Brecht

From the Jazz Side:

Abstractions by Charles Mingus

Django Variants by Gunther Schuller

Sketch by John Lewis

Perceptions by Dizzy Gillespie and J.J. Johnson 

Street Music by Bill Russo 

Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo/Miles Davis/Gil Evans

Blue Rondo A la Turk by Dave Brubeck

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach/Jacques Loussier

Suspensions by Jimmy Guiffre

Mood Indigo by Duke Ellington (shorter form classical influence)

Reminiscing In Tempo by Duke Ellington (longer form classical influence)

Dvorak Humoresque by Art Tatum

Interlude in B-Flat by Artie Shaw