For his latest album project, Virtuosi, vibraphonist Gary Burton took items from the classical repertory and adapted them for his jazz duo with pianist Makoto Ozone. Burton explained that he was an admirer of classical music rather than an expert, and that his selection process consisted of ordering a pile of CDs and listening to them one after the other until something caught his ear.
There are plenty of antecedents for this. Many musicians, from Duke Ellington to David Rees-Williams, not to mention Jacques Loussier, Hubert Laws and Dave Brubeck, have wrought jazz-classical hybrids with varying degrees of success.
But Burton and Ozone seem to have approached the matter from first principles, selecting compositions (such as Samuel Barber's beautiful Excursions) that luxuriate in the timbres of their two instruments. Pieces by Scarlatti, Gershwin and Rachmaninov provide opportunities for a level of playing that is dazzling by both jazz and classical standards.
The integration of the two idioms is a challenge: Le Tombeau de Couperin was more of a jam sandwich, a jazz waltz framed by the Ravel favourite. In Scarlatti's Sonata No 20, the improvisations seemed to develop more directly from the composer's themes and rhythms: even as the piece mutated into a high-energy, almost Cuban workout, you felt that Scarlatti would have recognised his piece.
A fantastic reading of Gershwin's Prelude No 2 had just enough decoration to make the piece work across both idioms (jazzy classical and classic jazz). Then Ozone's solo cheerfully dragged it downtown, with a stomping, grandiloquent solo reminiscent of Jaki Byard.
We expected high standards of virtuosity and accuracy, but the duo's audacious reinvention of Gershwin's piano concerto in F (third movement) took everyone by surprise; the hall erupted with applause. The old warhorse became a tour de force for Ozone (playing from memory), while Burton nonchalantly took the part of the orchestra.
The first half of the evening had a didactic air, as Burton paid tribute to the great players who popularised the vibraphone: Cal Tjader, Milt Jackson, Red Norvo. The history lesson ended with a swinging version of Benny Goodman's Opus Half, a tribute to Lionel Hampton. Later that evening, for their second encore, they returned to similar territory with a faultless, inventive spin through Air Mail Special.
