Central Park Variations

David Shifrin asked the composer to write a "jazz piece" for clarinet and piano, resulting in the idea to notate as exactly as possible a group of quasi-improvisational figures in the idiom of Afro-American music. Central Park Variations is almost two pieces in one--on one hand the structure is based on a traditional twelve-bar blues,  but it could also very well be a chaconne in D minor.  In Lalo Schifrin's words, the variations ultimately show "that jazz is a very rigorous discipline which allows certain freedom within fixed parameteres, while the so-called "serious" music can also be fun."