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Gerry [Schwarz] invited me to write something for the Starbucks project—the stipulation was that it had to be based on an older piece of music,’ Schiff explains. ‘I thought for about 30 seconds and then said I would base my piece on the ‘Infernal Dance’ from Stravinsky’s Firebird. My piece, ‘Infernal,’ is a double homage to Stravinsky and Henry Mancini.’

Schiff says one reason he picked Stravinsky’s Firebird was pragmatic: the Russian-born composer’s work is largely in the public domain, so copyright issues weren’t a concern. But Schiff was also intrigued by Stravinsky’s own reworking of themes and styles of other composers. ‘I did to Stravinsky what he did to countless others,’ he says.Schiff’s specific aim was to ‘rag the classics,’ as he puts it, ‘to give Firebird a much more American feeling.’ The result has ‘a different rhythmic feeling altogether’ from the original, he says—jazzier, hotter.

Schiff requested that the orchestra bring in a rock drummer to augment the percussion section, and during the studio recording he asked the trombonist to play ‘faster and dirtier—more in the style of Tommy Dorsey.’ Composing ‘Infernal’ left Schiff to speculate on the unrealized potential in Stravinsky’s work. ‘We think of Stravinsky as a great innovator in rhythm,’ says Schiff, ‘and he is. But he’s a small player compared to Jelly Roll Morton. If Stravinsky had been born in the U.S., think what he could have done.

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