Jazz-based works can add classical 'color'

The article "Lack of color at the classics" (May 14) addressed the small number of African-Americans playing or attending performances of classical music in Cincinnati. Although it's tempting to blame this on a racial divide - the music, for example, is primarily the province of Dead White European Males - the affinity jazz and classical music have long shared suggest otherwise.
During the birth of modern jazz, when racism was much more rampant than now, some of the most important black jazz musicians shared a reverence for European classical composers.

"When I write something, I have beauty in mind," said an early bebop composer, Tadd Dameron, and one way he did this was by incorporating the airy harmonies of Debussy and Ravel over bebop rhythms. Miles Davis was also quick to praise, and assimilate, their work.
Charlie Parker's reverence for the work of Bela Bartok was so strong that Parker insisted, after his daughter's death, that pieces by Bartok be performed at the funeral.

Although Bartok didn't influence Parker, both artists took melodies from a different medium (in Bartok's case, folk songs, and Parker, pop standards), reconstructing them into a style that was harsher and more dissonant.

Parker also loved Stravinsky, as did one of the key figures of the later avant-garde movement, John Coltrane.

After Coltrane's death his widow Alice Coltrane recorded, along with several self-penned symphonic works, selections from Stravinsky's "The Firebird," and afterwards met him. "Since that time, it has been incumbent on me to proceed forthrightly into the great master Stravinsky's works," Alice said later.
Increasingly, black avant-garde jazz artists have written symphonic and chamber music - such as Ornette Coleman (whose "Skies of America" is a classic), Matthew Shipp and Anthony Braxton.

Pianist Anthony Davis has penned some compelling orchestral works, ballets and operas. His most recent opera, "Wakonda's Dream," concerns a visionary Native American child who, while living on the land where a long-dead Chief was buried, "sees things, feel things, knows things."
Were this opera to come to Cincinnati, people would line up around the block to see it.

Music by the artists mentioned here would help satisfy an increasing demand for work that is edgy and unconventional. The powers that be can fret about a racial divide in classical music if they want - or they can take one immediate step by exploring some of the most innovative music of the past few decades.
Jeff Wilson of Clifton is a fiction writer who plays an occasional open-mic.