Classical, Jazz Unite At Institute

Critic-at-large

Thirty years ago, Gunther Schuller dreamed of fusing classical and jazz into a form he called the third stream.

The idea got some play and produced some interesting collaborations but never really took off.

Kenny Werner thinks it’s time to revisit the third stream, and Sandpoint is the right place to do it.

Werner is a jazz pianist of growing prominence and, for the past three years, has been an instructor in the jazz program at The Schweitzer Institute, the workshop arm of the Festival at Sandpoint.

The Schweitzer Institute, Werner said recently, is a place where classical and jazz musicians can come together under the direction of Gunther Schuller, the festival’s artistic director and an authority on both disciplines.

“What’s happening at the festival is very exciting,” Werner said, “I see more of a blending of the jazz and classical programs.”

Werner played a Brahms piece at a classical recital this year, one of the jazz students joined a classical ensemble for a performance, and “some of their strings played for one of our ensembles.”

Students in the jazz program attend classical composition workshops, and the classical students have begun seeking out the jazz musicians.

“They’re coming up to us,” Werner said, “and like they’re reaching out cautiously to a hot stove, they’re saying things like ‘How do you improvise? How do you play in time?”’

But from Werner’s jazz-centric point of view, the institute provides an even greater opportunity. Jazz is at a critical juncture, he believes, and must move away from the solo-dominated style of the past 30 years toward a higher level of composition.

“This is what Gunther Schuller was going after 30 years ago, when he wanted to blend classical and jazz,” said Werner.

The Schweitzer Institute is the ideal place for such a transition, he said.

“Gunther Schuller brings in world-class composers, and we’ve been having an opportunity to work with them. They talked to us one night last year, gave us a master class, and we got from Don Erb that there is a sense that jazz has grown too self-indulgent, in that you play a little head and then go off into massive improvisation, which is not the way it was in the days of (Duke) Ellington and (Jimmy) Lunceford.

“The composers like how the solos used to be light and economical and had more to do with the composition. And I think that is the way jazz is going to go, back toward more composition.”

Werner wouldn’t find universal support among jazz fans for that position, but the dynamic, composition-based jazz highlighted at the institute for the past three seasons argue for it. Under the tutelage of such players as Werner, Joe Lovano, Billy Hart and Ed Schuller, some of the finest young players in the land have made some powerful music, and their writing and playing skills have grown in the process.

“I’d have to say that it’s not stretching the institute too far,” Werner said, “to say that you’re going to listen to these people develop into the next great jazz artists.”

, DataTimes