The Gunther Schuller Society
Featured Articles
2023
Gunther Schuller and "Third Stream"
Jan 17, 2023 | joelharrison.substack.com
Last week I spoke some about how old-fashioned the idea of genres and categories is— except to salespeople. An important force in breaking down these barriers was Gunther Schuller, who I interviewed about a decade ago for Downbeat Magazine. Gunther was one of the greatest musicians and thinkers of our times, the man who coined the phrase “Third Stream” in describing the meeting ground of classical music and jazz that began in earnest the 1950’s.
2014
A Conversation With Gunther Schuller
Sep 29, 2014 | bmi.com
Gunther Schuller is full of dynamic energy as he continues to enjoy his career as a composer, conductor, educator and musician. ... The longtime BMI affiliate took some time out of his 12-hour day to talk to us about his amazing career and its beginnings, and to share what he has learned through the years.
2015
Yet Another Schuller Facet
Jul 21, 2015 | classical-scene.com
Since 1990 I had the privilege of working with Schuller. In one of our last conversations, he said: “Looking back I realize that Pro Musicis has been only a small part of my life, but one that means a lot and is very important to me. Sometimes people ask me why I devote so much time to Pro Musicis. I respond, How can I not? Father Merlet’s whole concept appeals to me. It has a religious aspect inspired by Saint Francis, respects the gifts of the artists, and shares the beauty of classical music with people who otherwise would never heard it.”
Gunther Schuller and Cincinnati: Personal memories from a patron and a critic
Jul 20, 2015 | janellesnotes.wordpress.com
Excerpts from my interviews with Schuller about Cincinnati.
Gunther Schuller (1925-2015)
Jun 23, 2015 | jazzwax.com
Gunther Schuller, a classically trained French hornist, composer and conductor whose passion for jazz motivated him to record with jazz musicians and then fuse classical and jazz into what would become known as Third Stream, died Sunday in Boston. He was 89.
I interviewed Gunther in 2010 on his jazz experiences. Here are all four parts of that inteview combined...
2013
Gunther Schuller on Miles Davis, Improvisation and Why Retirement Isn't an Option
Nov 15, 2013 | dallasobserver.com
It doesn't seem unreasonable to ask an almost 88-year old about his retirement plans, especially since he's in Dallas preparing two area colleges for back-to-back weekend performances. But when I started to bring up the topic, Schuller interrupted me with an indignant scoff. "Retirement! I don't know the word. This is my love. This is my life! Why should I retire from it? I mean, if I'm forced to retire because I start writing crappy music or my eyesight goes or my right hand won't write anymore I suppose . . . ." He lets the sentence trail off with a mumbled profanity.
Gens and Such: A Ramble about Gunther Schuller
Sep 22, 2013 | musicalassumptions.blogspot.com
I mentioned something about his memoir before he began his talk. He told me that he included all the names of the people he worked with in his index. I told him that I read a review copy (without an index), and was thinking that this book would have one hell of an index. I told him about getting a professional indexer to do the index for Bernie Zaslav's memoir. His response was "I did it myself. I love indexing." There you have it: a great organized mind doing what it likes best.
Jazz Appreciation Month: Gunther Schuller, 'Transformation'
Apr 11, 2013 | classicalite.com
Unlike other musical designations (e.g. "minimalist," "spectralist," etc.) the term "Third Stream" has a distinct, easily attributable etymology. Coined by Schuller in 1957, the "new genre that attempted to fuse 'the improvisational spontaneity and rhythmic vitality of jazz with the compositional procedures and techniques acquired in Western music during seven hundred years of musical development,'" was born out of "respect for and full dedication to both the musics it attempts to fuse." [Italics his.]
2011
Music Review/Commentary: Gunther Schuller’s Gift of Giving – Boston Conservatory’s New Music Festival III
Dec 5, 2011 | artsfuse.org
Face facts: we will never be able to repay Gunther Schuller. A Pulitzer Prize is a nice thing, as is a MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant. But how can we sufficiently repay someone who spearheaded a cultural climate shift, who has inspired at least four generations of artists, who revitalized a venerable institution of higher musical learning, who makes a city greater by his very presence, who gives and gives and sends out ever-greater circles of giving the longer he is with us?
Charles Ives: The Astonishing Pioneer
Nov 16, 2011 | aleaiii.com
A collection of videos, program notes, and photographs from their 2011 performance with Gunther entitled Charles Ives: The Astonishing Pioneer.
New Memoir By Gunther Schuller
Oct 28, 2011 | jamesboldin.com
Earlier this week I received news that Gunther Schuller’s latest book, the first volume of his autobiography, had just been released. The title is Gunther Schuller: A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty, and is published by the University of Rochester Press (cover photo at left linked from the URP page). If you haven’t heard of Gunther Schuller, you probably will at some point, as he has had a long and extremely wide-ranging career as a composer, author, conductor, teacher, and performer.
Why 'Fantasia' Mattered—Just Ask Gunther Schuller
Oct 28, 2011 | wsj.com
I was especially interested in what Mr. Schuller had to say about "Fantasia," Walt Disney's 1940 animated feature film about classical music, which he saw for the first time when he was 14: "That film masterpiece truly changed my life, particularly its Stravinsky 'Rite of Spring' sequence, which, as far as I can remember, was the first time I heard that remarkable music. It completely bowled me over. I knew then and there that I had to be a composer."
2010
Interview with Gunther Schuller
Sep 2010 | ethaniverson.com
Jazz knows him as the musicologist who authored two standard reference works, Early Jazz and The Swing Era; as a composer who invented the name “Third Stream” for collection of records including Music for Brass, Modern Jazz Concert, the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Third Stream Music, and Jazz Abstractions, and as a conductor who has delivered posthumous premieres of Scott Joplin (Treemonisha) and Charles Mingus (Epitaph).
Part 1
Part 2
In the Archives with George Schuller
Gunther Schuller: Conducting? He wrote the book
Aug 12, 2010 | theguardian.com
He might be the conscience of conductors, but Gunther Schuller is also a virtuoso jazz musician and an acclaimed composer. And that's not the half of it. Tom Service meets him
Proms 2010: Gunther Schuller – Where the Word Ends (UK Première)
Jul 20, 2010 | 5against4.com
At tonight’s Proms, almost a year-and-a-half after its world première, Gunther Schuller‘s Where the Word Ends finally found its way to England. It came in the hands of the splendid WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, under the direction of Semyon Bychkov, in his farewell concert with the orchestra he’s faithfully served for nigh on 15 years.
Gunther Schuller
Mar 19, 2010 | classical-music.com
The American composer and creator of the 'third stream', where atonal music met experimental jazz, talks to Helen Wallace
1998
He makes the music beautiful
sandpointonline.com
Maestro Gunther Schuller, artistic director of The Festival at Sandpoint, is one of the world's foremost composers and conductors
1995
Under The Tent Thirteenth Season Of Festival At Sandpoint Forces Organizers To Look Hard At Its Future
spokesman.com
When The Festival at Sandpoint started in 1983, it consisted of three concerts by the Spokane Symphony at Memorial Field. In 1985, Gunther Schuller, one of the great names in music and a veteran of 10 years at the Tanglewood Festival, was named artistic director at the Sandpoint Festival. By its fourth season in 1986, the festival had grown to 20 concerts of symphonic and chamber music
1998
He makes the music beautiful
sandpointonline.com
Maestro Gunther Schuller, artistic director of The Festival at Sandpoint, is one of the world's foremost composers and conductors
1981
Two Conversations with Bruce Duffie
bruceduffie.com
What is presented here are two interviews with composer, conductor, author, administrator and historian Gunther Schuller. The first was held in Evanston in May of 1981, while he was there to conduct the Orchestra of Illinois in a concert of Berlioz, Debussy, Haydn and Schuller. The second conversation took place in downtown Chicago in October of 1988, between performances of his Flute Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
1980
Sarah Vaughan - The Divine One by Gunther Schuller
jazzprofiles.blogspot.com
These remarks are drawn from Mr. Schuller's collection entitled Musings and they appear in Robert Gottlieb, editor, Readings in Jazz: A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now [New York: Pantheon Books, 1996, pp. 986-991].