"If the work of any jazz composer lends itself to elegant reframing, as opposed to crass sweetening, by a chamber orchestra, it is that of John Lewis, co-founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Lewis' ambition, most often metaphorically realised but sometimes literally so, was to achieve a synthesis of blues and Bach. His blends were mostly successful and only occasionally, in self-conscious forays into "third stream" music, did his innate vibrancy become subsumed in arid academia..."
More here.