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| Monday, January 4
Schuller and the MJQ On today's date in 1961, the New York City Ballet presented a new work choreographed by George Ballanchine and scored by a 35-year old composer named Gunther Schuller, who was conducting the pit orchestra. On stage, plunk 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 called 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 of it very favorable. The New Yorker, for example, thought it odd that the MJQ didn�t do any improvising, but instead "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 Time reviewer concluded, "it never seemed to be flowing anywhere." |  | Music Played on Today's Program: Additional Information:
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