This coming Sunday would have been George Russell’s 90th birthday. Russell, who died in 2009, is rather breathlessly described at allboutjazz.com as “…a hugely influential, innovative figure in the evolution of modern jazz, the music’s only major theorist, one of its most profound composers, and a trail blazer whose ideas have transformed and inspired some of the greatest musicians of our time.”
To be sure, Russell’s 1953 book The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, by opening the door to modal jazz, is at least partially responsible for Kind of Blue—one of the greatest albums of all time in any genre. Yet his compositions are invariably linked with the third stream movement, a fusion of jazz and classical music that somehow managed to alienate purists on both sides.
For what it’s worth, though, I like Russell’s approach. As a composer, the guy never stopped “testing himself and the universe of sound,” according to critic Nat Hentoff. So if jazz needs a theorist, I’m glad it’s George Russell.
Anyway, here’s “Souls” from Russell’s 1971 album Trip to Prillarguri—essentially a groovier (and much shorter) take on his 1968 composition “Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature.”
