Music Monday: Some Third Stream

Lately, I’ve been diving deeper into my my music collection to find music that captures my mood. I’ve also been fussing some with my stereo and swapped out my vacuum tube amplifier for a newer and honestly lovely Audio by Van Alstine “Single End Transistor” control amplifier. This has nudged me to listen to some different tracks over the last few weeks.

As a result, I’ve started to think a bit more about third stream jazz. This may be because it’s cool (literally, in a musical sense, and in the simpler sense that I like it), but also maybe because this year is George Russell’s centennial (the composer, not the F1 driver). I can’t really define Third Stream Jazz other than so mutter something about the influence of Classical music and some German sounding names.

I do appreciate thought some of the great examples of this genre. Most of these probably spin in people’s collections, but I’ll share three that I’ve been enjoying lately.

The first is The Gary McFarland Orchestra featuring Bill Evans (1963). Tragically, the full album doesn’t appear to be on Youtube! So I’ll share the track “Night Images” with is lovely conversation between McFarland on vibes and Evans on piano.

And here’s “Tree Patterns”: 

I’ve also been enjoying some Modern Jazz Quartet, in particular, their trio of mid-1950s releases: Concorde (1955), Django (1956), and Fontessa (1956) whose title track, I’ll post below: 

And as a little bonus: 

Finally, especially as we approach Holy Week, I’d be remiss not to include “Saeta” from Miles Davis’s iconic Sketches of Spain (1960):

As a bonus, I’ve noticed that some people are counting Floating Points Promises (feat. Pharoah Sanders) (2021). as a modern contribution to the Third Stream. Since I very much enjoy this album and it appears in its entirety on the Youtube, it seems silly not to add it to my Music Monday: