Jazz and Culture in a Global Age by Stuart Nicholson

Author:Stuart Nicholson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Northeastern University Press

Real Life Examples of the Key Glocalizing Elements: Folkloric, Local Classical, and Local Pop

Taking each of the above three elements in turn, it is possible to cite brief examples of these processes at work in the new millennium years at a local level to gain a practical understanding through auditory experience of the glocalization process—and this is the key: “hearing” the ways in which glocalized jazz differentiates itself from American jazz, yet retains certain aspects in common with it. Thus the following are merely examples, not a definitive list, since this is worthy of a book-length study in itself, but is intended here to give students and readers alike an idea of how theory translates into real-life practice, and to provide a starting point for the musically curious to begin their own enquiries into the glocalization processes at work.

Glocalization: Examples of Elements Derived from Classical Music

The phenomenon of jazz musicians turning to classical music is hardly new. In the late 1930s there was a craze for “swinging” the classics—Benny Goodman scored a hit with the Welsh composer/arranger Alec Templeton’s “Bach Goes to Town,” the John Kirby Sextet recorded several successful classical novelties by the likes of Chopin, Dvořák, Schubert, Lehar, and Donizetti, and Tommy Dorsey enjoyed huge success with Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Song of India.” Indeed, there is no shortage of examples dotted over the last eighty or so years of jazz history, not least Igor Stravinsky’s “Ebony Concerto” written for the Woody Herman Orchestra in 1946, or Tchaikovsky’s “Arab Dance” and Mussorgsky’s “The Old Castle” brilliantly rearranged by Gil Evans for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra. (Evans would later successfully adapt Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto De Aranjuez” for Miles Davis in the 1950s.) During the 1950s a confluence of jazz and classical music emerged called Third Stream. The list that goes on through the decade to more contemporary times, such as tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker’s Cityscape with Claus Ogerman, to Wynton Marsalis’s Swing Symphony.

The Austrian pianist Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) was one of the outstanding virtuoso concert pianists of the twentieth century, famous for his interpretations of Mozart and Beethoven, but he was also a musician with a deep understanding and love for jazz. He was no dilettante, as albums such as his first jazz recording, Friedrich Gulda at Birdland (1956), recorded at the Birdland jazz club in New York, and As You Like It (1970) through to collaborations in the 1980s with Chick Corea attest. The German tv documentary The Three Faces of Friedrich Gulda examined his work as a classical pianist, jazz pianist, and composer. In the latter context, his classical works often included provision for improvisation, such as his Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra (1980) in five movements, including jazz, a minuet, rock, polka, a march, and two improvised cadenzas for cello, while his compositions for the Eurojazz Orchestra included “Variations for Two Pianos,” recorded with Joe Zawinul. As Friedrich Gulda: Wanderer between Two Worlds noted, “Gulda’s intensive occupation with jazz enabled him to make particular congenial use of interpretational

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