Piano Concerto and Jazz Music in the Second Half of the 20th Century. New Approaches to the Stylistic Fusion Concept

Abstract

In the early years of the twentieth century, jazz and academic music each followed a distinct path, each exhibiting its own stylistic evolution. Most jazz musicians did not have any formal musical education and those in the academic milieu were, in their turn, neither jazz performers nor jazz composers. With the evolution of the jazz genre and its penetration in the field of the concerto, jazz becomes a credible music and starts enjoying a well-defined and generally accepted value rank in its own right, to the point where classic music performers and composers become open to experimenting fusion with jazz. Piano concertos were initially timid in approaching such fusion and consisted of taking over and stylising some jazz-specific components and integrating them into their own piano concerto language. In the second half of the twentieth century, piano concertos capitalising on this stylistic mix grow more and more natural and elaborate, turning into a field for expression of the most diverse jazz / academic music fusion. The fundamental driver that prompted the growth in value of the piano concertos that were approaching the jazz-classic music fusion proved to be the gradual familiarisation of classical music composers with the two stylistic directions through their experience as performers or through their academic music education. This article provides a brief overview of the pluralistic approach of the piano concerto genre at the intersection between jazz and academic music creation in the second half of the twentieth century and in the early twenty-first century.