Will Friedwald - Wall Street Journal

The idea of combining jazz with classical-style string ensembles has been around since the 1920s, and been tried in everything from Dixieland to free jazz. But, owing to economic and other considerations, it's increasingly rare in the contemporary era. Pianist Billy Childs has taken the high road: His is not just a jazz group with a string-quartet annex. He has sought to blend the two factions into a completely coherent sound. For his new album, "Autumn: In Moving Pictures—Jazz/Chamber Music, Volume 2," Mr. Childs has composed five original pieces for his Chamber Ensemble and supplemented them with treatments of Gabriel Faure's "Pavane" (a classical warhorse in dance tempo) and Bill Evans's "Waltz for Debby" (a jazz standard with classical implications). It's impossible to tell where the jazz ends and the classical music begins.