was hired on a per-project basis, relieving him of the busy work. At the same time, he began to manage and produce his own artists as well, beginning with John Lewis and Gunther Schuller's Orchestra U.S.A. ensemble; singer/songwriter Bob Morrison; and saxophonist Charles Lloyd. Though most known for jazz and pop album production, Avakian notably involved himself in two theater projects. In 1947, he arranged for a group of musicians under the leadership of the saxophonist Eddie Barefield to perform incidental music for the play A Streetcar Named Desire during its Philadelphia and Broadway runs. In 1965, he was an associate producer of the first Off-Broadway revival of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock, and he personally financed the recording of the cast album (the first complete recording of that show). As the recording industry moved further away from the music closest to his heart, Avakian left RCA in 1964 and never again held a full-time job at a record label. He began working at Avakian Brothers, and through the rest of the 60s and into the 1970s, he managed to hold down that job while launching and running the high-flying career of Charles Lloyd, as well as that of Lloyd's young pianist, Keith Jarrett. Avakian arranged for the Charles Lloyd Quartet, which also featured Jack DeJohnette and Ron McClure, to be the first small American jazz group to perform in the Soviet Union (at the Tallinn Jazz Festival, 1967); he also produced several very successful Lloyd albums for Atlantic Records. Avakian did even more for Jarrett, arranging record deals, managing tours, and producing albums on Columbia, Atlantic, and Impulse. He also negotiated a contract for Jarrett with Manfred Eicher, the founder of a new German label, ECM Records, for whom Jarrett still records as of 2017. Throughout his career, Avakian worked hard to foster intercultural exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. He was the first to record Soviet and American artists together (Pavel Lisitsian Sings Armenian Songs With Maro Ajemian At The Piano, New York Records, recorded in 1957, released in 1960). After organizing the Benny Goodman 1962 tour and Lloyd's successful Tallinn appearance in 1967, Avakian assisted Duke Ellington and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis orchestras in planning their Soviet visits, befriending many figures in Russian music, such as writer Leonid Pereverzev, bandleader Oleg Lundstrem, and trumpeter Valery Ponomarev. Avakian also sponsored the first performance by