French Music and Jazz in Conversation

French concert music and jazz often enjoyed a special creative exchange across the period 190065. French modernist composers were particularly receptive to early African-American jazz during the interwar years and American jazz musicians especially those concerned with modal jazz in the 1950s and early 1960s exhibited a distinct affinity with French musical impressionism. However despite a general if contested interest in the cultural interplay of classical music and jazz few writers have probed the specific French music-jazz relationship in depth. In this book Deborah Mawer sets such musical interplay within its historical-cultural and critical-analytical contexts offering a detailed yet accessible account of both French and American perspectives. Blending intertextuality with more precise borrowing techniques Mawer presents case studies on the musical interactions of a wide range of composers and performers including Debussy Satie Milhaud Ravel Jack Hylton George Russell Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck.