Actually, the Bix Beiderbecke/Gustav Mahler connection is a bit more complicated than that:
Prior to moving into the Amazonas to live with and learn from the Xingu, Egberto Gismonti studied orchestration and analysis in Paris with Nadia Boulanger (and Jean Barraque, who in turn was a disciple of Schoenberg who claimed his own work to be nothing but a continuation of...Mahler whose 9th, according to him, was "the first work of new music"), who also taught Aaron Copland whom she introduced to the music of...Mahler; one of Copland's own proteges was then to be the Oscar-winning composer and pianist Elmer Bernstein (no relation to Leonard), known mostly for his jazz-influenced film scores, who credits much of his success as a composer to his father's habit of spending all his evenings listening to...Bix Beiderbecke!
But the plot thickens. Gismonti's teacher was also the mentor of another young man frequently referred to on this board. Studying analysis and counterpoint with Boulanger launched a certain H.L. de la Grange's career in criticism, prompting him to start writing about music and records and decide to one day write a biography of...the composer Gustav Mahler.
The plot becomes thicker still. There was yet another youngster studying with Boulanger, going by the name of E. Carter, who later on went to write his sole opera "What Next?" based on a libretto by the well-known music critic Paul Griffiths who is the celebrated author of a distinguished biography of the above-mentioned composer Jean Barraque (
The Sea on Fire) who, as noted, was the mentor of said Mr. Gismonti who went on to live with the Xingu of the Amazonas in the kind of a hut pictured.
That's not all of it, however. After a NY Philharmonic concert in 1943 (which featured music by Miklos Rozsa, one of the mainstays by the way of the above-mentioned Elmer Bernstein's own record label, in addition to Bernard Herrman who was heavily influenced by...Mahler [and Alban Berg]!), the owner of the Samuel Bernstein Hair Company expressed doubts that his son participating in that performance would ever be able to make money from his hobby, said son being the conductor debutant Leonard Bernstein, a notable future proponent of...Gustav Mahler, and the friend lending an ear to such paternal worries David Diamond, an American composer who too had studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, the teacher of the composer-instrumentalist Gismonti in question, and himself was the music teacher of Artie Shaw, a clarinetist who played jazz with...Bix Beiderbecke! (And Mozart with Leonard Bernstein, the noted...Mahler conductor.)
A little bit labyrinthine, I know, but so are all the true stories in real life, and on the face of it we seem to be nowhere OT yet.
PT
