“NEW EARTH SONATA,” Hubert Laws Quincy Jones...

“NEW EARTH SONATA,” Hubert Laws Quincy Jones Chick Corea. CBS Masterworks M30858. This album offers startling evidence of the increasingly frequent disappearance of any demarcation lines between classical music and jazz. Harold Blanchard’s title composition, written for flute, guitar, piano and rhythm, takes up the first side. Although the three-movement work, with its subtitles “Security,” “Peace” and “Joy,” is skillfully crafted for the ensemble, Laws’ flute brings together the disciplines of both worlds or rather, of the one united world he represents.

To some degree, this is also true of Chick Corea, who divides the keyboard responsibilities with Blanchard, and some of whose work is clearly improvised; this applies also to the guitarist Bill Kanengiser and the bassist Bob Magnusson. It would have been impossible for most of these musicians to have brought the project to fruition without extensive empirical understanding of both the classical and jazz elements.

The second side comprises three movements from Telemann’s Suite in A Minor for Flute and Strings, with Quincy Jones conducting a string orchestra. Here the written elements are dominant, as is the case in the concluding track, a peaceful and graceful arrangement by Laws and Don Sebesky of the traditional “Amazing Grace,” with personnel that includes the harpist Dorothy Ashby and John Beasley on the Yamaha DX7.

Quincy Jones is quoted in the notes as stating, correctly, that music has been undergoing a dramatic turnaround, of which men like Hubert Laws and more recently Wynton Marsalis have been symbols. 4 stars.