Prelude, Fugue and Riffs

Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs served like a music lecture for me. Its climax sounds “like” his West Side Story but this composition is a masterpiece of counter point, utilizing Baroque vocabularies, he created a great “written-out” jazz composition. The last part of Riffs, the third movement is quite ecstatic. It was premiered by Benny Goodman even though the composition was originally commissioned by Woody Herman. Well, my favorite Béla Bartók also wrote a tune called Contrasts for Benny Goodman. And I remember Stravinsky wrote Ebony Concerto for Woody Herman. There is an interesting episode about Bartók writing Contrasts which I read in his biography, but I will write about it when I find a good video of the tune on YouTube or somewhere else.

The name of this band seems to be Synchronicity and they transcribed the composition for piano, percussion, bass and yes, clarinet. Some parts sound rather interesting, but some other parts are a bit “thin” ensemble, especially “fugue” part has lost mastery of the original, but this version has its own charm.

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