William Russo was a jazz arranger, composer and orchestra leader from the Fifties up to the Nineties. He was born in 1928 in that northern city of jazz, Chicago. He travelled the world over though and everywhere he went he put his mark on the performing of jazz. He worked together with Duke Ellington, Leonard Bernstein, Cannonball Adderley, Yehudi Menuhin, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Holiday and like on this record with conductor Seji Ozawa.
This record was the follow-up of a very successful album that came out in 1973, where Seji Ozawa and the San Fransisco Symphony Orchestra worked with him and the Siegel-Schwall band. The cross-over collaboration was a success, so for this record it is mostly the same group. The composition Street music is not bad. There is not so much music where jazz, and quite old style jazz at that, is combined with classical music. Seji Ozawa is a quite formidable conductor, and together they pull it off.