CCMusic.com

In the specific field of jazz/classical music crossover, the 1920s were crucial. They gave us one of the first, absolutely extraordinary, works of the genre: the famous "Rhapsody in Blue." John Lewis moved in the same direction as Gershwin, but from a very different vision and experience. Indeed, Lewis was an excellent jazz pianist, but above all Lewis, besides being a great jazz player, was deeply in love with the music of Bach and from the earliest years of his career onward made the blues/Bach pair the banner of his artistic life. It is to this musical conception and to the compositional art of John Lewis that, a little more than two decades after his passing, "Blues and Bach" wishes to pay tribute. His tunes have been reworked and orchestrated for the occasion with an ensemble that, in some ways, is itself a crossover within a crossover (jazz trio plus string quintet and woodwind quintet).