Joe Hisaishi, japanese movie composer for a majority of Miyazaki films, re-arranges his scores into jazz arrangements in the album “All That Jazz”. Check out “A Town With an Ocean View” from Kiki’s Delivery Service! Feel free to compare the rest of the album as well.
A Town With An Ocean View (Original)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLIlDhZ8Jrc
All That Jazz (A Town With an Ocean View at 3:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hthTuOIsbhQ
I am a huge fan of Joe Hisaishi and Miyazaki, so I’m definitely going to have to check this album out. The idea of re-arranging a more “classical” piece into a jazz style reminds me of where a lot of the early jazz standards came from. I think a lot of them were arrangements of popular and broadway tunes that used the same chord progressions and melodies, but the style, rhythm, and harmonies were completely different. Writing arrangements like this one almost seems to me like creating a new sibling for the original piece. They’re two separate musical entities, but they are intimately related to each other and understanding one can help understand the other.