Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab 1979 Double Album "Demo Copy Sealed"

The fusion of Jazz and contemporary concert music has appealed to a great number of Jazz musicians and so-called "classical" music composers. This work by Don Sebesky may be counted among the genre's more successful experiments.
The music often sounds like a film soundtrack. It incorporates traces of Bartók, Stravinsky, Copland, and the Jazz music draws from Monk, Ellington, Coleman. The result is quintessential American music, also quintessential seventies music. It earned two Grammy nominations in 1979. _Bird and Bela in B_, a concert really, is hybrid music, sure, but daring, often good, and some passages are quite fascinating. The arrangement and reconstruction of Rite of Spring could have gone awfully wrong - Stravinsky had already done it to perfection; Sebesky scales it down and adds Jazz aspects to it without disgracing it. The final Sebastian's Theme, the shortest piece, its title hinting at the famous German baroque composer, is the most conventional composition of the three, however, it rounds off the album nicely.
If anything, this album proves Don Sebesky's rank as one of the most professional and indeed, one of the finest arrangers in Jazz.

Musicians:
Don Sebesky, Jon Faddis, Bob Brookmeyer, Alex Foster, Joe Beck, Gordon Beck, Richard Davis, Jimmy Madison, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Side 1.

1. Bird and Bela in B

Side 2.

1. The Rite of Spring

Side 3.

1. Bird and Bela in B (2)

Side 4.

1. Sebastian's Theme