Monday, November 4, 2024, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EST

Stephen Crist

Professor of Music History and Chair, Department of Music

"Bach and Jazz: Strange Bedfellows?"

This talk will consider the relationship between the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and jazz. It might seem that these two repertoires would have nothing to do with each other, since Bach worked in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century and the origins of jazz date to around the beginning of the twentieth century in the US. But through a series of vignettes—including music by Dave Brubeck, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Oscar Peterson, and Nina Simone—I will unfold a taxonomy of the various ways in which jazz musicians have responded to the music of Bach and demonstrate that they aren’t strange bedfellows at all.