The Grammy-Award winning composer, arranger, conductor and pianist Lalo Schifrin died on Thursday, June 26, 2025, following complications of pneumonia. He was 93.
While the multi-talented Schifrin worked in many musical genres, from various Latin forms and jazz to classical and concert works, he was celebrated and renowned for his work in TV and film. Schifrin scored more than 100 films and television programs, and, among them, some of the most iconic films and TV shows of the latter half of the twentieth century, including the iconic and immortal theme to “Mission: Impossible” (1966).
The “Mission: Impossible” theme – and the equally-familiar counter-theme “The Plot” – also factored in the 1988 reboot of the show (starring original cast member Peter Graves [1926-2010]) as well as all eight of the Tom Cruise “Mission: Impossible” films, which began in 1996, up to and including this year’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
But Schifrin was also known, and appreciated by this, and many other listeners, for his historic and wide-ranging work in jazz. His voice in jazz was unique in that he considered himself a composer first and as a pianist, second. Classically trained, the jazz-loving Schifrin also had a natural gift for swing and an intuitive sense of rhythm. His piano playing is as individual – that’s him tickling the ivories on Quincy Jones’s “Soul Bossa Nova” – as his compositional style.
Some faulted him for jazz that was too cinematic (or “soundtrack-like”) while others bemoaned the faux-jazz content in his soundtracks. Still, Schifrin had a knack for strong, clever melodies, bubbling over with rhythmic verve, whatever the tempo. One thing Schifrin never was was boring.
Schifrin’s work in jazz too often goes unmentioned, unappreciated or unreviewed – particularly once his Hollywood career took off. While one of Schifrin’s earliest successes, Gillespiana (1960), is often – and rightly – championed, too-little else of Schifrin’s jazz work is much talked about.
I plan on posting a possibly-contentious “best-of” list for Lalo Schifrin’s soundtracks in the coming days. But it’s well worth noting some of Schifrin’s jazz triumphs over a six decade period outside of film and TV.
- Gillespiana – Dizzy Gillespie (1961)
Lalo Schifrin exploded onto the American jazz scene with this, his “Suite for Trumpet and Brass Orchestra,” written especially for Dizzy Gillespie (1917-93). Gillespiana, Schifrin’s introduction to American audiences, set the standard for New York studio jazz orchestra recordings in the early 60s and remains a milestone in Gillespie’s illustrious career.
Schifrin’s love and respect for the trumpet player is evident throughout. And Dizzy responds, in kind, with some dynamic, exciting interchanges.
There are nice spots for Schifrin on piano, Leo Wright on reeds and Candido Camero on percussion, too.
This Grammy Award-nominated disc is worth repeated listens, even some studying. Schifrin’s very formal charts mingle perfectly here with the improvisational talents of its featured players. This is truly classic American music.
Schifrin performed the suite with Gillespie a number of times, including a performance caught in France in November 1960 (issued under various titles) and a date at the Hollywood Bowl, several days after the premiere of the composer’s failed The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich cantata in August 1967. The composer himself conducted a reunion band performing the “Gillespiana Suite” at Carnegie Hall in 1995, featuring Jon Faddis in honor of the late Mr. Gillespie. Schifrin recorded the suite again for his own label, Aleph, the following year.
Schifrin would go on to compose the Dizzy Gillespie albums The New Continent (1962, released 1965) and Free Ride (1977), but with none of the panache of Gillespiana, a legendary facet of Gillespie and Schifrin’s storied careers.
2. The Cat – Jimmy Smith (1964)
The Cat, is not only one of jazz organist Jimmy Smith’s (1928-2005) finest orchestral outings, it is one Lalo Schifrin’s most notable “for-hire” stints as an arranger. Similar in formula to the many Jimmy Smith records with Oliver Nelson, this is one of Smith’s very best Verve recordings during the 60s.
For many years, both Smith and Schifrin shared the same agent, Clarence Avant (1931-2023), and since both were contracted at MGM/Verve at the time, it seemed inevitable that the two of them would wind up recording together.
Surely, Smith can be counted on for hot licks. But Schifrin’s orchestra, comprised exclusively of brass and rhythm, can kick one swinging line after another to keep the organist enthused.
While the Grammy Award-winning “The Cat” is well-known, “Theme From ‘Joy House'” is the best of the bunch here. At the time, it was one of the only opportunities to hear Schifrin’s excellent theme to the great cult film starring sexy Alain Delon and Jane Fonda. (Schifrin’s original soundtrack, Les Félins (1964), has since been issued on CD.)
Smith is acknowledged as one of the greatest organists in jazz; but he often lets one or two sticky-sweet sentimental songs creep into each of his albums. There’s nothing on The Cat like that.
Perhaps it’s Schifrin’s influence, but even the ballads (“Main Title From ‘The Carpetbaggers'” and “Blues in the Night”) have a swinging moodiness that seem to rock Smith into sterling performances. Highly recommended for tremendous musicianship that’s very entertaining as well.
Kudos, too, to PolyGram (now Universal Music): This was one of the very first CDs issued in the mid 80s and it has remained available ever since.
3. Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts – Paul Horn (1965)
The Grammy Award-winning Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts was a groundbreaking marriage of jazz – here, a mix of west coast cool and free improv – with liturgical music. Multi-instrumentalist Paul Horn (1930-2014) first approached Schifrin in 1964 to compose a “jazz mass” in English. The two were able to gain the endorsement of Father Norman J. O’Connor (1921-2003), the “Jazz Priest,” who helped secure the Vatican’s support and approval of the commission.
The album proved to be less controversial than expected, indeed the response proved positive. “An amazing piece of work,” noted Billboard (July 17, 1965). And there was a three-and-a-half star review in DownBeat.
But there was a somewhat quiet resistance to the album, even so. Catholics resented an English-language liturgy while too many others clung on to the old-fashioned view of jazz as “the devil’s music.” Ironically, though, both Schifrin and Horn were both…Jewish.
The suite was initially recorded on November 5, 1964, with the premiere performance taking place nine days later at the University of Southern California Methodist Church. In their review of the USC performance, DownBeat considered the event an “unqualified success” that bested the studio record, originally released on RCA.
Horn, playing flutes, clarinet and alto sax, is accompanied by his quartet, a small orchestra and chorus. There is a meditative quality to much of the music (except the free-ish “Credo”), yet the performances come alive on such up-tempo pieces as “Kyrie” and “Offertory.” Again, Schifrin marries multiple and opposing styles with a poetry that is all his own.
In 1965, Jazz magazine called Jazz Suite “one of the best attempts at religious jazz, on or off record” while Down Beat said “from a jazz point of view, there are several fine spots on this disc. But they are just spots, and if jazz is one’s primary interest, the jazz in this suite is well diluted by non-jazz elements.
The 1965 album – which was only ever issued as a now out-of-print CD-R (but now available to stream) – won Lalo Schifrin the Grammy Award for Best Original Jazz Composition and Ken Whitmore, deservedly, won the award for Best Album Cover – Photography. Jazz Suite was also Grammy-nominated for Best Performance by a Chorus and Best Instrumental Jazz Performance.
Schifrin would conduct the suite again in May 1966 at UCLA and in June 1967 at the Hollywood Bowl, both with Horn as featured soloist, and still again at the September 1968 Monterey Jazz Festival (with Tom Scott replacing Horn).
Schifrin reunited with Horn for the flautist’s Dream Machine (1978), a pleasant Schifrin-composed disc, but one that’s far less substantial than the Jazz Suite.
The suite was later re-recorded by Schifrin for Jazz Mass in Concert (1998), with the WDR Big Band and featured soloist Tom Scott on woodwinds. Here, Schifrin gets top billing and gives the suite the title, Jazz Mass, that the composer wanted in the first place.
There, Schifrin extended the composition by satisfyingly upping the jazz quotient and, oddly, adding his take on “Battle Hymn of the Republic” – a favored Schifrin theme, going all the way back to Kelly’s Heroes (1970) – titled “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah,” an American patriotic song that references religious imagery and theology, but is not at all a Christian message.
4. Marquis de Sade – Lalo Schifrin (1966)
This one sports the ungainly title The Dissection And Reconstruction Of Music From The Past As Performed By The Inmates Of Lalo Schifrin’s Demented Ensemble As A Tribute To The Memory Of The Marquis De Sade and otherwise became known as either Marquis de Sade or, for catalog-listing purposes, Schifrin/Sade.
The title, likely suggested by producer Creed Taylor, riffs off the title of the 1964 Peter Weiss stage play “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade,” otherwise known as Marat/Sade, the title of Peter Brook’s acclaimed 1967 film of the play.
Despite the conceit, this is the first of Schifrin’s jazz albums under his own name to score an artistic victory. Even after such wonderful Verve releases as Samba Para Dos (1963), New Fantasy (1964) and Music From The Motion Picture “Once A Thief” And Other Themes (1965), this one clearly stands out.
Musically, Marquis de Sade is clearly meant to capitalize on the then-fashionable trend of such “baroque pop” hits as the Zombies’s “She’s Not There,” (1964), the Beatles’s “In My Life” (1965), the Rolling Stones’s “Lady Jane” (1966), the Left Banke’s “She’s Not There” (1966), among many others.
Here, Schifrin applies the baroque to jazz, much as French pianist Jacques Loussier applied jazz to the baroque in his Play Bach series, as far back as 1960. Schifrin creates his own beautiful variations on the classics here. His inspiration is diverse, even divine, with Bach (“Bossa Antique”), of course, as well as Henry Purcell (“Aria”), Francis Hopkinson (“Beneath a Weeping Willow Shade”), Telemann (“Old Laces”), even Ramsey Lewis and the Rolling Stones (“The Wig”).
The musicianship is first-rate. Schifrin is graceful and evocative on piano and especially the di rigueur baroque harpsichord, while Jerome Richardson is light and airy on reeds. The always underrated Gene Bertoncini is on guitar, Richard Davis is on bass and Grady Tate is as sensitive as ever on drums.
Schifrin delivers a rich, compelling program of originals here that would later inform his celebrated Jazz Meets the Symphony series (1992-2011). Indeed, the composer retooled such memorable Marquis themes as “The Blues For Sebastian Bach” (a.k.a. “Bach to the Blues” – 1), “Renaissance” (a.k.a. “Madrigal” – 2), “Beneath a Weeping Willow Shade” (a.k.a. “Eine Kleine Jazz Musik” – 3) and “Troubadour” (a.k.a. “Summer Dance” – 7) for the JMTS series.
At the time, Verve’s publicity department had a field day with Marquis‘s advertising; a sample of which goes like this: “For those who think Jung? Don’t be a Freud! Jump in with Lalo Schifrin and his jazz analysts for a tiddly, tingly, definitely titillating album of free-swinging jazz. Whether you go for baroque or are off your Rococo, listen to what’s been done to music here!” Wow, talk about spin that spins out of control.
This was the last “jazz” album Schifrin recorded for at least a decade. Some might argue it was even longer, with the release of the little-known 1982 trio outing Ins and Outs (reissued, with two 2002 live performances added, on CD in 2003).
Years later, a sequel followed, Return of the Marquis de Sade (2002), with three of the retitled tracks from the original and two songs reworked from this disc’s “Old Laces” (“Come to Me”) and Schifrin’s “Memory of Love” (“Justine”). Without question, Marquis de Sade is a unique, gorgeous and inspired statement and one of the buried treasures in 1960’s jazz. It is also an essential part of Lalo Schifrin’s extravagantly diverse discography.
5. Black Widow – Lalo Schifrin (1976)
Lalo Schifrin’s first non-soundtrack studio album since Rock Requiem (1971), Black Widow reunites the composer with producer Creed Taylor in New York for an above-average amalgamation of jazz, pop and disco grooves. The album has since gone on to become a recognized funk classic.
The program is highlighted by a powerful disco take of John Williams’s theme to Steven Spielberg’s hit film Jaws (1975) and the mighty groove of the disc’s banger of an opener, “Black Widow.” The former became a hit in Europe – a full two years before Meco’s disco-fueled take on Williams’s “Star Wars” theme became a massive hit – while the latter had also been recorded the year before in California, presumably for an album on the 20th Century label that never materialized.
(In the June 12, 1976, issue of Billboard, Tom Moulton reported that an eight-minute and 15-second version of “Jaws” was being distributed in an advanced test-pressing to DJs to positive effect. While an official 12-inch of “Jaws” was issued at the time, backed with “Flamingo” and “Quiet Village,” on CTI OJ-2, it is the album version that is included there. The little-known and ultra-rare advance copy bears the catalog number CTI 6791, the year of the release, but backwards.)
The rest of the set includes several Schifrin originals (“Turning Point,” “Dragonfly”) and, surprisingly, a bunch of cool, updated overhauls of several fifties-era easy-listening favorites – much like Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra and the Salsoul Orchestra were doing at the time.
Of these, Schifrin had previously arranged “Baia” for singer Pat Thomas’s Creed Taylor-produced album Desafinado (1963) and Al (He’s the King) Hirt’s lovely and underrated Latin in the Horn (1966, which also features Schifrin arrangements of this album’s “Frenesi” and “Tabu,” there as “Taboo”).
Photographer Pete Turner’s cover photos are absolutely pitch perfect and give Schifrin yet another iconic cover for his music.
Black Widow was first issued on domestic CD in 1997, extending the playing times of several songs on the original program and adding four previously-unreleased bonus tracks. One of these, “Frenesi” (previously recorded by Schifrin on his 1959 album Piano Espanol) came from the LP’s March 1976 sessions, but was likely left off as just one tune too many.
The other three bonus tracks hail from a session cut a full five months earlier and feature an uncredited George Benson among the other unnamed musicians.
These small-group tracks up the jazz quotient considerably, with Schifrin gloriously taking the lead throughout on Fender Rhodes. These tracks include “Tabu” (which Schifrin previously recorded with Dizzy Gillespie on 1963’s New Wave!), a longer, more thrilling take on “Baia” (which also features another guitarist, likely either Joe Beck or Eric Gale), and Gillespie’s “Con Alma” (incorrectly credited here to Schifrin and inexplicably fades at the reprise of the main melody), a song Schifrin played with Gillespie’s band since he first joined in 1960.
Benson sounds absolutely wonderful in this context and this trio of tracks makes the ultimate release of Black Widow all the more formidable. Schifrin would reunite with Benson – this time as a vocalist – for “Street Tattoo,” the main theme to Schifrin’s score to the film Boulevard Nights (1979).
Schifrin’s next – and last – CTI release, Towering Toccata (1977), would have made this list, too, if it hadn’t been bookended by two real Schifrin joys, this disc and the next, Gypsies (1978). Towering Toccata boasts some of Schifrin’s then-recent film and TV themes (notably the dynamic theme to the short-lived TV show “Most Wanted”) and is highlighted by Schifrin’s “Midnight Woman,” with Joe Farrell on flute and Eric Gale on guitar, and a superb disco cover of John Barry’s monster theme “King Kong.” Almost great, and truly a Top 11 or 12.
6. Gypsies – Lalo Schifrin (1978)
Lalo Schifrin’s 1978 move to Tabu Records, a label founded by Schifrin’s longtime manager Clarence Avant, came as a bit of a surprise.
The move to a label renowned for such successful soul and reggae acts as the S.O.S. Band, Alexander O’Neal, and the Wailers, seemed to signal that Schifrin was headed in a more commercial direction. While that was certainly proven true on Schifrin’s next – and final – Tabu release, No One Home (1979), Gypsies is pure Schifrin and one of his greatest non-soundtrack releases.
This all-instrumental album, however, largely eschews improvisation (and much real jazz content) almost altogether, concentrating on Schifrin’s compositional talents and his dynamic, tightly-constructed arrangements.
While it could suggest a batch of non-existent film or TV themes – much like Moby’s 1997 disc I Like to Score or Chris Joss’s 1999 Music from The Man with the Suitcase – each of the eight pieces here suggests something of a disco-pop concerto, with synthesizers and electric keyboards stating most of the main themes.
“Disco-pop” sounds derivative in the extreme. But it’s difficult to categorize this music. It’s not jazz, it’s not classical, it’s not soundtrack, and it’s certainly not pop fare. Yet it could be experienced – and enjoyed – on each of any of those levels.
A considerable number of L.A.’s best studio musicians, particularly the horns of Bobby Bryant, Oscar Brashear, Tony Ortega and Ernie Watts, punctuate throughout. The rhythm section, with Dean Parks on guitar, Abraham Laboriel on bass and Jim Keltner on drums (sometimes of the electric kind), is particularly notable. All factored on Schifrin’s soundtrack recordings of the period as well.
There is much that is admirable here, particularly “To Cast A Spell” (which bears similarities to “Robbery Suspect” from Schifrin’s Sudden Impact score), “Fortune Tellers,” “Moonlight Gypsies,” and the compelling and hypnotic “Pampas.” Schifrin would later expand “Pampas” for the “Andante lontano” movement of his Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra (1984 – recording issued 1985) and tweaking the theme yet again for his Latin Jazz Suite (1999), discussed below.
Like so many discs featured here, Gypsies also benefits by some especially beautiful packaging: photographers Jim Walden (1949-2019) and Harry Liles (1939-2025) provided the stunning photos; Nick Fasciano (who designed the jazz-rock/pop group Chicago’s familiar logo) did the calligraphy; Art Sims (b. 1954), who designed many notable album covers (Bob Welch, Rose Royce, Minnie Riperton and Gypsies player Ernie Watts) as well as movie posters for The Color Purple (1985), New Jack City (1991), Black Dynamite (2009), Black Panther (2018) and many Spike Lee films, did the album’s striking design.
Gypsies was issued on CD in 2014 in a beautiful CD-sized, book-like package, with informative and lovingly-written notes by A. Scott Galloway, and interviews with such Gypsies participants as Schifrin, Laboriel, Watts, and percussionists Alex Acuña and Emil Richards. The disc also features the bonus tracks of the single edits of “Moonlight Gypsies,” “Fortune Tellers,” and “Prophecy of Love.”
It was always my hope that Schifrin would revisit the entirety of Gypsies, particularly the pretty “King of Hearts,” either with a symphony orchestra or retooled in total for a Jazz Meets the Symphony release. Sadly, that never happened. But Gypsies can be appreciated exactly for what it is. A gem.
7. The Cat Strikes Again – Jimmy Smith (1980)
This may appear to be the lone wild card in the deck. Why The Cat Strikes Again, and not, say, There’s a Whole Lalo Schifrin Goin’ On (1968) or Rock Requiem (1971)? Those latter discs are wonderful bits of Schifrin-iana and they certainly have their cult appeal.
But despite both being first-rate Schifrin music, their appeal is limited by a certain level of pop-jazz kitsch on Goin’ On and (good) soundtrack-ish rock on Requiem. To be fair, though, this listener would favor Requiem over any other flower-power religious music of the era. But, here, it would land at number 11 or 12.
After many successful collaborations in the early sixties with such artists as Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan and Paul Horn, Schifrin – at the height of his fame as a film and TV composer – returned for sequel albums with these artists, beginning in the late seventies. Perhaps because of the infusion of disco at the time, many of these reunions proved to be less-than-memorable duds: pleasant but forgettable.
One exception – although the Stan Getz reunion, Children of the World (1979) comes close – turned out to be with organ great Jimmy Smith (1928-2005). Schifrin collaborated with Smith on the organist’s big-band disc The Cat (1964), one of the finest discs Smith waxed for Verve between 1962 and 1973. Smith went on to record several interesting discs for his own MoJo label before returning to the major leagues with three middling outings on Mercury.
In July 1980, Smith was again in the Hollywood studios to wax his second and final meeting with Schifrin, The Cat Strikes Again. The strong program mixes a handful of memorable Schifrin tunes with originals by Smith and a cover of German bandleader James Last’s “Lonely Shepherd.” Both Smith and Schifrin are at their swinging-est best here.
The Cat Strikes Again is essentially a “demonstration record,” featuring the world’s best-known jazz organist playing the little-known German Wersi Saturn organ (amazing that Sun Ra was never recruited to promote the thing). While much better arranged and peopled than most demo records, Strikes Again is also one of the strongest Smith outings in some time and, perhaps, the last notable release in the organ master’s massive half-century catalog.
Schifrin contributes the disc’s finest moments: “The Big Brawl,” the dynamic main theme to the 1980 Jackie Chan film Schifrin had just scored (a soundtrack that was only issued in Japan at the time and did not appear on CD until 2017); “Down Here on the Ground,” the main theme from Schifrin’s score to the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke (popularized by Wes Montgomery as an instrumental and, later, George Benson as vocal number); a vastly upgraded take on “Free Ride,” formerly the title track to Schifrin’s 1977 reunion with Dizzy Gillespie; and the familiar-sounding (to these ears) Latin disco of “Wersi Time;”
Smith’s “Layin Low,” “Where is Magdalena?” and the out-blues of “In Search of Truth” are great swingers, too.
The disc features Ronnie Foster on piano, Howard Roberts and Dennis Budimer on guitar, Ray Brown on bass, Chuck Domonico on electric bass, Grady Tate on drums and Paulinho da Costa on percussion. Altogether, a really terrific outing and a good day for all.
In August 1980, Jimmy Smith was honored for 25 years as the “world’s greatest jazz organist”—a claim substantiated by Leonard Feather presenting him with his 1980 DownBeat Critics Poll award.
Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley declared August 14 of that year as “Jimmy Smith Day,” where the organ great was feted at a black-tie concert in Pasadena’s Ambassador College Auditorium. Smith played in a trio with Kenny Burrell and Grady Tate, before moving on to join Lalo Schifrin’s 26-piece big band, where they played tracks from 1964’s The Cat and his recently-recorded The Cat Strikes Again.
8. More Jazz Meets the Symphony – Lalo Schifrin (1994)
Lalo Schifrin had largely abandoned jazz in the eighties, a period when the music itself was greatly in flux. A full decade passed between his acoustic small-group disc, Ins and Outs (1982), and his jazz trio with symphony orchestra outing, Jazz Meets the Symphony (1993) – both discs notably share different takes on “The Fox” and “Brazilian Impressions,” while JMTS‘s Grammy-nominated “Dizzy Gillespie Fireworks” incorporates the two Gillespie songs on Ins and Outs.
The concept of “jazz meeting the symphony” was what fueled some of Schifrin’s best and most notable film scores, from Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Bullitt (1968) to Dirty Harry (1971) and Enter the Dragon (1973). Something about the concept also seemed to reinvigorate Schifrin’s interest in returning to his jazz roots.
Schifrin would ultimately record seven discs in the JMTS series between 1992 and 2011, and one of the best of the lot is the wonderful second set, More Jazz Meets the Symphony. On this disc, Schifrin’s classical-jazz marriage rises above the odds and cements a winning formula.
The two long suites included here are lovely tributes to both Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. In each case, Schifrin’s orchestrations are sensational and exciting and stay true to the contexts he explores. Jon Faddis, usually employed as a stand-in for Dizzy Gillespie, has the thankless task of standing in for the other namesake trumpeters. But he more than holds his own, with Schifrin’s superb backing.
The remainder of the program is seemingly familiar, yet the way Schifrin’s arrangements dress them up is something new and fascinating. Schifrin returns to “Down Here on the Ground” (the main theme to Cool Hand Luke), “Chano” (a.k.a. “Long, Long Summer”) and “Madrigal” (a.k.a. “Renaissance”) as well as standards by John Lewis and Cole Porter.
Schifrin’s infrequent piano is like a sly character sneaking in and out – with witty comments each time he makes himself heard. The addition of Faddis, James Williams and Paquito D’Rivera contributes tremendously. Bassist Ray Brown, on the other hand, is sublime and the session’s real star. Highly recommended.
More Jazz Meets the Symphony was also included on the Jazz Meets the Symphony Collection (1999), which combined the first four albums in the series with a disc of audio interviews with the participating musicians.
9. Latin Jazz Suite – Lalo Schifrin (1999)
Lalo Schifrin’s Latin Jazz Suite is a masterful celebration of the diverse and colorful sounds and feelings that Latin forms add to the jazz vocabulary. It also ranks among Schifrin’s most enthralling contributions to the Latin musical language over the previous four decades (these include soundtracks Sol Madrid and Che! [both 1969] and such burners as “Latin Soul” and “Doña Donna”).
This enthralling, consistently engaging six-piece suite – recorded live over two nights of its June 1999 premiere in Cologne, Germany — most recalls Schifrin’s historic Gillespiana suite. But Latin Jazz Suite is a milestone of arguably greater proportion.
As a composer, Schifrin reveals here a greater, more refined depth of maturity, a worldly mastery of musical forms and a perfected sensibility for the drama and adventure of long-form structures. The suite scales Cuban (“Montuno”), Caribbean (“Martinique”) and Argentinean (“Pampas”) structures to those informed by Brazilian (“Manaos”), African (the superb “Ritual”) and flamenco (the Grammy-nominated “Fiesta”) styles.
Percussion flavors subtly throughout, but never dominates or overwhelms. Schifrin’s no tourist. He uses his compositional prowess to suggest the different landscapes he traverses. He also divides the star roles most intriguingly. The orchestra — voiced here by the great WDR Big Band, which commissioned the work – carries the majority of the melodies and punctuates poetically with some of Schifrin’s most Gil Evans-like scoring (perhaps acknowledging the influence of Sketches of Spain).
Solos are manned by an exciting triumvirate, including Schifrin (marvelous) on piano, Jon Faddis (at his Dizzy-est best) and young firebrand David Sanchez on tenor and soprano saxes. A stronger triad is difficult to conceive.
The suite’s highlight is the pulsating, chant-like “Ritual,” a hypnotic and vibrant piece in 12/8 time that elicits especially commanding solos from Faddis, Sanchez and, most notably, Schifrin himself.
Other highlights include the catchy “Martinique,” a Caribbean polyglot of Sonny Rollins’s “St. Thomas” and Schifrin’s own “Roulette Rhumba,” and the concerto-like beauty of “Pampas,” Schifrin’s visit back to a 1978 theme (from his underrated Gypsies disc) enlivened most imaginatively by “Street Tattoo,” the composer’s theme to the 1978 film, Boulevard Nights.
This 65-minute opus ultimately suggests a sort of jazz symphony. The invention of Schifrin’s conception, interacting with the wit and verve of the players, protect against any kind of museum-quality stodginess, too. As it unfurls, it reveals itself as a most entertaining work.
When it’s over, it lingers in the mind and the heart as a real work of art. Surely, Latin Jazz Suite is among the best, most memorable of Schifrin’s jazz recordings, ranking up there alongside Gillespiana, Jazz Mass and Marquis de Sade.
10. Kaleidoscope – Jazz Meets the Symphony #6 (2005)
Each of Lalo Schifrin’s journeys into his remarkable “Jazz Meets The Symphony” series celebrates musical artistry of the highest order. In a series that stretches back to 1992, Schifrin has cast jazz folk like Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Bix Biderbeck and others on a par accorded to such “greats” as Bach, Mozart, Copland or Gershwin.
By this point, the series seemed to be exploring many of the glories of Schifrin’s own past.
In this, the sixth disc in the series and the first since 2000’s Intersections (with the Grammy-nominated “Scheherazade Fantasy”), Schifrin revisits much of the ground he covered on his Creed Taylor-produced album New Fantasy (1964) A full five of New Fantasy’s eight titles are reconsidered and greatly improved upon with the wisdom Schifrin has gained in the four decades since his prototype “jazz meets the symphony” record was made.
It helps that Schifrin has some outstanding support from trumpeter James Morrison (occasionally blowing in the obligatory Dizzy role), bassist Christian McBride (outstanding in the Ray Brown role), Sydney-based drummer Gordon Rytmeister, the lavishly peopled Sydney Symphony and, most astoundingly of all, the arranger and conductor himself on piano – on every track!
Schifrin reflects on his musical heritage by assaying such New Fantasy tracks as Villa-Lobos’s “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5”, “Peanut Vendor”, Copland’s “El Salón Mexico”, “Slaughter On Tenth Avenue” and Gershwin’s “Prelude No. 2,” as well as a surprisingly graceful orchestral version of his theme from The Cincinnati Kid (no doubt in honor of original singer Ray Charles, who passed away only several months before this recording) and “Paraphrase,” a virtual book of Schifrin quotes from “The Cat,” “Kelly’s Heroes” and Rock Requiem done up New Orleans style (another reflection from The Cincinnati Kid.”
But the real treats here are found in the delicious “Jazzette,” “Peanut Vendor” and “To Be Or Not To Bop.” Schifrin’s “Jazzette” is one of his most exciting themes in a long time, offering a wondrous mix of low brass and high strings and excellent solos from the pianist and the bassist.
Schifrin recasts the wicked “Peanut Vendor” in a dark “Mission Impossible”-like ostinato, completely unlike the 1964 arrangement, and solos the hell out of McBride’s entrancing vamp on piano, which launches Morrison into a trombone solo that begs to dance with the devil (not bad for a guy who just issued his own gospel album, also featuring Rytmeister).
“To Be Or Not To Bop,” the name of Dizzy Gillespie’s autobiography, is pretty much a new chapter to Gillespiana, Schifrin’s amazingly imaginative journey through nearly every idea Diz bopped his way through during the 1940s and 1950s.
Kaleidoscope is one of the strongest musical statements in the late stages of Schifrin’s recorded legacy– and certainly ranks, along with More Jazz Meets the Symphony (1994), among the best of the JMTS series.
Like Esperanto (2000) – a disc I once hailed as “renaissance music from one of contemporary music’s most renaissance composers”- the title Kaleidoscope perfectly captures Schifrin’s ever-evolving patterns of musical imagination and the beautiful blend of changing colors he brings to music, whatever name you choose to apply to it: jazz, orchestral, world music, whatever.
Kaleidoscope fits just fine.
Honorable mentions: The New Continent – Dizzy Gillespie (1962), Several Shades of Jade – Cal Tjader (1963), New Fantasy – Lalo Schifrin (1964), Music From The Motion Picture “Once A Thief” And Other Themes – Lalo Schifrin (1965), There’s a Whole Lalo Schifrin Goin’ On – Lalo Schifrin (1968), Rock Requiem – Lalo Schifrin (1971), Towering Toccata – Lalo Schifrin (1977), Children of the World – Stan Getz (1979), Hitchcock – Master of Mayhem – Lalo Schifrin (1990), and Esperanto – Lalo Schifrin (2000).