The French composer Maurice Ravel once stated that jazz was the future idiom of the “American” sound in classical music — but of course in 1920’s Paris, where jazz was all the rage, this was already true. Composers such as Francis Poulenc and Erwin Schulhoff helmed the emergence of a new style that blended Mozartian elegance with this new music, especially in the latter’s Hot-Sonate written in 1930 for saxophone and piano. On the other hand, American composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein explicitly wrote in a language informed by African-American jazz of New York City, in addition to the Latin influences and blues traditions that intertwined in such a cultural melting pot. Duke Ellington’s Blue Bubbles ends our program with a bang in a new version by Don Byron and Uri Caine, turning Ellington’s dapper tune into an uproarious romp.
Three Preludes for Piano, George Gershwin arr. Nick Davies | Hot-Sonate, Erwin Schulhoff | Sonata for Clarinet & Piano, Francis Poulenc | Sonata for Clarinet & Piano, Leonard Bernstein | Blue Bubbles, Duke Ellington