The hybridization of jazz and classical styles has not always been successful. Over the past century, many earnest attempts have been made to cross-pollinate the two traditions – one steeped in three hundred years of Western European concert music, the other emerging from Afro-Cuban folk traditions in the parlors of New Orleans. Sparks have been thrown at various points – Duke Ellington’s brassy stomps, George Gershwin’s sweeping showtunes, Dmitri Shostakovich’s marvelously lopsided foxtrots and Charles Mingus’s hiccuping ostinatos, to name a few – but the vast majority of experiments have read more like grudging handshakes than inspired collaborations.
A new crop of fresh musical thinkers hopes to change this. New Amsterdam Records, an indie label based in New York, recently released two new albums by celebrated young composers who seek to fuse jazz and classical at the molecular level (Ted Hearne’s Katrina Ballads and Sam Sadigursky’s Words Project II), and have a third planned for Spring (Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society’s Infernal Machines.) The Hotel St. George Press Listening Room is proud to present selections from these radically different approaches. We hope you enjoy them. To listen to more music or purchase tracks/albums, please click here.
[from "Katrina Ballads"]
1. Brownie, You’re Doing A Heckuva Job
[from "Live at the Poisson Rouge"]
1. Desolation Sound
2. Ferromagnetic
[from "Words Project II"]
1. The Sea and The Man
2. The War Works Hard
