The
Quatuor Ébène
has recorded jazz and other vernacular music in the past, beginning on the 2010 album
Fiction
and continuing with such releases as
Brazil
and
Eternal Stories
. The 2024 release
Milestones
, named for the famous track and album by
Miles Davis
, is not a new experiment in the way the earlier albums were; the performances here reproduce those that the
has worked out and played in concert for some years. But it is good to have these collected in one place, inasmuch as the quartet is undergoing personnel changes in the mid-2020s. The attraction is the variety of treatments in the arrangements by the quartet's cellist,
Raphaël Merlin
. Many "Third Stream" fusions of jazz and classical music are animated by a single general concept, but
Merlin
alters his procedures in line with the nature of the original pieces, which are mostly 1950s modern jazz standards. He may offer a straightforward configuration in which the quartet substitutes for the jazz ensemble, but the group members may take solos of various kinds in more complex textures.
emulates a jazz bass in
Toots Thielemans
'
Bluesette
. And in the complex opening passage of
Thelonious Monk
's iconic
'Round Midnight
, where a straight transcription of the original would be cumbersome,
substitutes registral shifts for
Monk
's instrument deployments. They're sensitive treatments that send one back to the jazz originals, which says a lot for them, and they comprise a fresh installment in the long and still-developing history of Third Stream music. ~ James Manheim