Jazz Variations - Bassoon Unaccompanied

Jazz Variations is the first piece I composed with an ear towards American jazz and how it might find its way into my definition of concert music. I composed the work in 1977 while I was in graduate school and beginning to search for my own compositional voice. In the Jazz Variations, I chiefly wanted to explore the rhythms of jazz. I was not interested in flatted thirds or sixths, nor was I really interested in the harmonic progressions of jazz. I was under the influence of John Coltrane's sense of rhythmic flow and chose to try to explore that in a small way in this work. The work was composed for Lynn Moran Riccardo, for her senior recital at Juilliard.

— Libby Larsen