Synopsis

On today’s date in 1961, the New York City Ballet presented a new work scored by a 35-year old composer named Gunther Schuller, who was conducting the pit orchestra. On stage, in the middle of the green- and purple-garbed dancers, were four additional musicians: namely, the Modern Jazz Quartet, decked out in their usual white ties and tails. Schuller’s score, entitled Variants, was an attempt to fuse modern music and jazz into a style he labeled Third Stream.

”I had this idea of the First and Second streams [classical and jazz] getting married and giving birth to a child, which is the Third stream," recalled Schuller years later, ruefully noting that today one would have to call it the 10,000th stream as composers have since introduced a multitude of ethnic, folk and vernacular music into the mix as well.

But back in 1961, the idea attracted a lot of press – not all favorable. The New Yorker, for example, thought it odd that the MJQ “sat like a quartet of hunters in a duck blind, anxiously shooting out carefully calculated notes.” Time magazine wrote: “Schuller’s score was the essence of the cool – spare, fragmentary, but resembling jazz only in its rhythmic drive.” If this was the Third Stream, the reviewer concluded, “it never seemed to be flowing anywhere.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Gunther Schuller (b. 1925) Conversation Modern Jazz Quartet and ensemble; Gunther Schuller, conductor. Wounded Bird 1345