For critics and listeners, the reception of the 1950s jazz-classicalhybrid Third Stream music has long been fraught. In John Lewis and theChallenge of Real Black Music, Christopher Coady explores the work ofone of the form’s most vital practitioners, following Lewis from his role asan arranger for Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool sessions to his leadershipof the Modern Jazz Quartet, his tours of Europe, and his stewardship ofthe Lenox School of Jazz.

Along the way Coady shows how Lewis’s fusion works helped shore up afailing jazz industry in the wake of the 1940s big band decline, forging anew sound grounded in middle-class African American musical traditions.By taking into account the sociocultural milieu of the 1950s, Coadyprovides a wider context for understanding the music Lewis wrote for theModern Jazz Quartet and sets up new ways of thinking about Cool Jazzand Third Stream music more broadly.