Stratusphunk: The Life and Works of George Russell

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Stratusphunk - George Russell was a unique figure in jazz. He was a theoretician, a composer of note, a working musician, and an educator. He began his life’s work developing the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization in the mid-forties. One of a rare breed of thinker-musicians, through his ideas and music, Russell had a remarkable influence on the development of jazz after 1950. From his early composition with Dizzy Gillespie of Cubano-Be, Cubano-Bop, through the changes wrought by modal jazz as a consequence of his ideas, to his impact on the Scandinavian and European scenes, his achievements are among the most outstanding in the music.

His life story weaves its way through contemporary jazz intersecting with the lives of many of its most colourful characters. Charlie Bird Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, Gil Evans, Charlie Mingus, and Carla Bley were not just Russell’s contemporaries. They were his peers, his colleagues and his friends. He touched their lives and music and, in turn, was encouraged by them.

Originally published in 2010 under the title George Russell: The Story of an American Composer, Duncan Heining’s biography of George Russell appears in a newly revised paperback edition for the first time.