#classical jazz

Fred Lipsius: A Musical Genius?

The word genius is certainly thrown around too easily. But Fred Lipsius is an excellent alto saxophonist. Along with Randy Brecker (and later Lew Soloff) he was the true jazz voice in Blood, Sweat & Tears. This article in Patch.com fills in the rest of his career. Like other musicians who tour with crossover bands or make their living in the studio world, Lipsius’s jazz abilities has gone largely unnoticed.

-Michael Cuscuna

Various Artists: Jazz Abstractions (1960)

Pianist John Lewis, founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet, receives top billing on this LP, but even that is an “abstraction,” of sorts, since he neither performed, nor was very involved here, other than “presenting” it and lending his composition “Django” to the proceedings.

So I followed the lead of numerous, far more knowledgeable jazz scribes with my “Various Artists” designation, among which the true instigators of these Jazz Abstractions were composer, conductor and musician Gunther Schuller and, to a lesser degree, guitarist Jim Hall.

It was Schuller who wrote the opening “Abstraction” that takes flight on fluttering strings over seemingly chaotic stabs of sax, guitar, bass and drums, in a synthesis of jazz and classical music that I’ve now learned was dubbed Third Stream by the composer himself.

Schuller also arranged the three “Variants on a Theme of John Lewis (Django)” and four “Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk (Criss-Cross),” all of which feature, among others, Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans, and Eric Dolphy on flute and bass clarinet!

Listening to these jarring, dissonant, avant-garde tableaus, I couldn’t help but surmise that my man Frank Zappa was an avid student of this LP, and indeed it seems the two men became friendly later in life.

Last, but not least, there is Hall’s aptly called “Piece for Guitar & Strings,” which finds him weaving in and around an intricate string sextet, and I just realized that the engineer on these sessions was none other than a young, pre-Billy Joel Phil Ramone.

In sum: while I can’t even remember who recommended me Jazz Abstractions (I certainly didn’t discover it on my own), I do know that I found this well-preserved copy at New York City’s stalwart Jazz Record Center, and that I’m now totally down with the Third Stream!

Ella Fitzgerald - These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)