Piano Connections: The Studio of Megan Hughes

You may remember Gunther Schuller. In his youth, he made a big splash in the classical music world by taking jazz seriously and mixing it with classical idioms. It is hard to remember now, but just a short while ago a classically trained musician couldn’t get much respect if he dabbled in jazz.

Schuller did more than dabble. He played  with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus. He also was president of the New England Conservatory of Music and has had his works played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. Those are pretty good credentials from both sides of the aisle.

Schuller almost single-handedly made Scott Joplin’s ragtime piano music a part of every pianist’s repertoire.

Here is a recent story on him in the Dallas Observer.