In the 1939-40 academic year at Harvard University, Igor Stravinsky delivered a series of six lectures in French entitled Po��tique musicale sous forme de six le?ons.

Stravinsky analysed the role of the critic, the requirements of the interpreter and the state of Russian music. He believed that a composer's freedom to create rose from a platform of structures which incorporated the rules of music—a process that ultimately frees the spirit. Stravinsky understood his own vocation as that of a craftsman, rather than a revolutionary or an artist.

What have Stravinsky's lectures to do with music in general, and this music by Philip Ravita and his group? Everything, if you ask me. For contained in Stravinsky's lectures—now essays in print—is the study of the craft of music-making. Upon listening to Ravita's music, one finds that the same values and rules appear to apply to both composers. As it happens, Dr. Ravita plays symphonic as well as jazz music. The two composers are drawing from the same well.

In these works by Ravita Jazz in Alice Blue, Stravinsky's influence seems apparent. Ravita's music is relevant and enduring. The album includes five Ravita originals, two compositions by pianist