Gunther Schuller

Gunther Schuller was probably the greatest friend jazz ever had from the classical world. A jazz devotee from the beginning, he was the most outspoken advocate of a fusion between elements of European classical music and jazz, inventing the term "third stream" at a 1957 Brandeis University lecture to describe it. Although third stream music had been around in some form since the beginning of the century, it was Schuller who crystallized the idea, and thanks to alliances with such jazz figures as John Lewis, George Russell, Charles Mingus, and Jimmy Giuffre, he actively encoura...