Jacques Loussier plays JS Bach
2019 saw the death of France’s talented composer and musician, Jacques Loussier, best know for his “jazzed up” interpretations of the works of the baroque composer JS Bach.
Whether he was the first jazz exponent of JS Bach’s music I don’t know, but he clearly recognised, understood and loved the rhythmic and harmonic qualities of certain JS Bach compositions which offered potential for reinterpretation in a jazz form which Bach would not have understood.
Or would he…?
Because the fact is JS Bach did understand one of the cornerstones of jazz - “blue notes” - which he often used to create emotional tension in dissonance and then resolution. And JS Bach was simply using techniques and conventions established centuries before during the Renaissance and possibly earlier.
So what we call “jazz” is not profoundly new, different or strange to what went on before - and maybe JS Bach would have greatly enjoyed these inspired reworkings of his music - merely a development in a particular direction focused on rhythm and “blues” of work done by generations of musicians and composers in previous centuries and across various genres of folk and popular song, and so-called “classical music”.
The point is, to quote the 60s, you either dig it or you don’t
This is one of Jacques Loussier’s more introspective arrangements of JS Bach, the Andante from his Concerto in D major BWV 1054