Hollywood called...

...and Max Steiner was the first of this dynamic duo to answer, arriving there in 1929, initially working for the RKO Studios as an orchestrator and then as a composer. This was not his first affiliation with Hollywood, however; he functioned as Fox Studio's musical director, adding live music to silent films presented in New York theaters where he had already established himself on Broadway. The call to come west must have triggered an urge as primal as the subject of Steiner's first film scoring triumph, the mythical King Kong. That 1933 opus not only turned an unlikely story—conveyed by means of a pedestrian script with rudimentary stop-motion effects—into a believable and jaw-dropping RKO epic, it set film scoring technique and tone for decades to come. "Every character needs a theme," he said. The use of musical leitmotifs comes right out of the Wagner opera playbook, but Steiner managed to codify it as an essential element of film scoring vocabulary. Steiner's gift for melody, however, can be called his own.

While Max Steiner left the continent for London and then New York during the First World War, thus being considered an enemy alien for a moment, Erich Wolfgang Kongold fled Nazi Austria for Hollywood in the days leading up to the Second World War. He first came to America in 1934 by way of impresario Max Reinhardt's invitation to score a film production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

But, it is said that The Adventures of Robin Hood may well have saved the lives of Korngold and his family. Their storied escape from Vienna included occupancy on the last train to leave Austria, bound for the ocean liner that would bring them to America and, ultimately, to Toluca Lake, mere blocks from the Warner Bros studio lot where Korngold composed the score.

Vienna's musical loss would become the world's gain. In a sense, both Hollywood and Vienna could lay claim to Korngold and Steiner.

This album project seeks to connect many dots—spoken and unspoken, uttered but never scored to film, heard in one cinematic fever dream or another, but not yet committed to the art of improvisational jazz, arguably, America's greatest contribution to world culture. Surprisingly few jazz "covers" or treatments of these Hollywood legends' scores exist. And while Kongold maintained a composing life outside of movie theaters, many of his themes initially existed in films. (Korngold enjoyed a unique relationship with Warner Brothers, maintaining unlimited usage of the music he wrote for film.) Kongold proved to be a prolific recycler. The JAM MUSIC LAB All-Stars take things a step further ...

Hey, I have an idea...

If you picture a table of fellows enjoying a dinner in Vienna, it's easy to imagine plates of schnitzel and glasses of beer. It was during one of these get-togeth-ers that I changed whatever subject was at hand by interjecting, "Hey, I have an idea..." Jeff Levenson, the man who brings more ideas to life than anyone else I know, sat up in his chair and this encouraged me to continue: "Why don't we record an album of the music of Korngold and Steiner, who were both from here, celebrating their gorgeous melodies, many of which are ripe for jazz treatment?"

The idea of jazz adapting or adopting film music is not news):