Abstract: The third stream and the progressive jazz have a special place in the modern orchestral jazz. The article considers the album “Real Enemies” by an American musician James Argue. His are in the top of ideas of the contemporary experimental jazz. One of the peculiarities of Argue’s work, which makes it stand out from similar works of the earlier period, is the closeness of this composer’s ideas to Postmodernist practices. The authors consider some Postmodernist aspects typical for the contemporary jazz. Argue himself is considered as a jazz artist inclined to excessive intellectual component, who prioritizes orchestrations, relatively complex by jazz standards, and exquisite work consisting in jazz stylistics rethinking via mixing the instruments of jazz expression with various techniques of academic music of the 20th century. The authors give special attention to a detailed musicological analysis of the key compositions of the Secret Society’s Real Enemies.
 

Abstract: The third stream and the progressive jazz have a special place in the modern orchestral jazz. The article considers the album “Real Enemies” by an American musician James Argue. His are in the top of ideas of the contemporary experimental jazz. One of the peculiarities of Argue’s work, which makes it stand out from similar works of the earlier period, is the closeness of this composer’s ideas to Postmodernist practices. The authors consider some Postmodernist aspects typical for the contemporary jazz. Argue himself is considered as a jazz artist inclined to excessive intellectual component, who prioritizes orchestrations, relatively complex by jazz standards, and exquisite work consisting in jazz stylistics rethinking via mixing the instruments of jazz expression with various techniques of academic music of the 20th century. The authors give special attention to a detailed musicological analysis of the key compositions of the Secret Society’s Real Enemies.
 

Abstract: The article deals with musical opuses created in the conditions of synthesis of jazz and academic idioms. The authors analyze the positions of domestic and foreign researchers connected with the definition of style attributes of two unorthodox directions of contemporary music art — the Third Stream and the Progressive.  A number of researchers uphold the positions, according to which the Third Stream is an independent artistic phenomenon. The development of its aesthetic features is associated with the emergence of a new type of composers whose professional skills are closely connected with both ideological bases of academic music and the artistic palette of jazz music. In numerous studies devoted to jazz culture, the style definitions of the Progressive and the Third Stream are in a state of mutual competition. Depending on the context used by the researcher, the phenomena can intersect, displace or replace each other. Ethnic elements were included in the integration process in the course of further development of the ideas of the Third Stream, by reference to artistic practice. The artistic peculiarities of the Third Stream and the Progressive were analysed by some researchers through the prism of more general musical issues, so that the boundaries of these phenomena are constantly shifting. In opposition to the dominant paradigm there are musicologists who strongly criticize the idea of mixing different levels of artistic layers, levelling the deep differences of the synthesized musical cultures. In the current situation, there is a need for an in-depth approach to the specific features of the Progressive and the Third Stream which should be understood as independent phenomena that can be successfully distinguished.