The rare flutist to ascend to stardom in the jazz world, Hubert Laws ranks as one of the genre’s greatest shapeshifters. Born in Houston in 1939, Laws was raised playing in both classical and jazz idioms. While attending The Juilliard School, he played in big bands, worked as a session musician, and recorded jazz albums for Atlantic. By the late '60s, he was simultaneously gigging with the most esteemed classical orchestras in the country—the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Throughout his career, Laws would draw on his impressive second life in art music on his jazz bandleader records: most famously, 1971’s Rite of Spring, which features jazz reinterpretations of classical fare. Laws also strove to erode boundaries between pop and jazz; on his '70s and '80s records, Laws revamped contemporary pop music in a jazz context and interpolated styles like funk and disco. From the '90s up until the 2010s, Laws remained active performing classical works, collaborating with pop and jazz icons, and dabbling in his own curious hybrid experiments.