The Gunther Schuller Society
Featured Articles
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?
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
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