EC isn't a jazzbo, but I believe he was at least one orchestral work to his credit.

I can only agree with him (and the BBC's treatment of a veteran like Allen Toussaint is deplorable), but I wonder what exactly he's hoping to achieve by this outburst, other than alienating the people he despises still further?

Personally, I'm at the polar opposite of the people he's denouncing...I don't really listen to any music written/performed by people under sixty.

I know of at least two EC works which have crossed into "Classical" territory...    there's the Song-Cycle "The Juliet Letters", for singer plus string quartet  (which has been widely appreciated) and his ballet "Il Sogno", based on A Midsummer Night's Dream (which hasn't).  Maybe there are some more too?   He also did recordings of Dowland's lute-songs (with Fretwork) long before Sting thought of the idea...  some of them were issued on the "producer's cut" 2-disk re-release of "The Juliet Letters" as fillers on Disk 2.

I believe he's also/was also working on a ballet score or opera (can't remember which) for a national company in Finland.

Perhaps there's also an element of bitterness behind all this? Costello hasn't had a hit single/album/song in a long, long while in this country (or in the US, probably....can't speak for other territories), so he may feel that his audience has left him behind.  When the irony is, that it's probably more a case of him leaving his audience behind.....as tends to happen when musicians who establish themselves in one genre go on to experiment in others. 

I don't own that much EC, though I do like most of his stuff....he can be a great songwriter, at his best probably as good as any songwriter who's ever lived (and several notches up from many more commercially successful ones).  However, I have to hold my hand up and say that I haven't really explored much of his oeuvre beyond the glory days of 'Trust' and 'Imperial Bedroom' (his high watermark as regards rock/pop music), though what I've heard of 'Juliet Letters' and the collaboration he did with Burt Bacharach, I've liked. 

So, I imagine EC is now, like it or not, a 'greatest hits' artist.  He shouldn't worry too much, though: he's in very good company (and he's a multi-millionaire on royalties alone, without licencing his songs as jingles).

Indeed. Although there's an awful lot of Shostakovich's 8th Quartet in it. EC does have a tendency to fail to root out harmonic mannerisms from his style (whether they're his own or others ), despite being one of my favourite singer-songwriters ever, and I'm afraid that, although I mostly like The Juliet Letters, I think they're the start of a long slide into crossover-ish mediocrity.

Interesting that you mention Trust and Imperial Bedroom, S_K. I actually think in many ways that the first two albums, My Aim is True and This Year's Model, are EC's best work. Possibly, despite his lyrics' clever ironies, I don't think he's good when he gets too self-conscious, and I certainly find the inflated production values of Imperial Bedroom (which EC has described as the record on which, having finally made enough money, he indulged himself with Sergeant Pepper-style production values) less satisfying than the earlier albums' nonchalant melting-pot of 70s pop styles ('New Wave' being a bit of a misnomer for such vibrant stylistic eclecticism).

Trust I know less well (isn't that the one he said was made in the most paranoid phase of his early stardom, under the influence of various white powders only one of which was Mackenzies Smelling Salts?), though again, I wonder if it isn't already a little too self-consciously oppressed by Thatcher. I don't know why I'm being so harsh on that aspect of Costello, actually; the magnificent sneers (at Thatcher or whichever other real or imagined target) are one of the things I admire most in his vocal style and lyrics.

Yes, well, many people actually see fit to study composition in order better to understand and preempt such things.

Funnily enough (?), he did, and for those reasons - with John Woolrich, for several years. Did it have the desired/any effect? Don't think so.

A lot of people object to the production on Imperial Bedroom, but I think Costello and (Sergeant Pepper engineer) Geoff Emerick carry it off pretty well.  They wanted to make a great-sounding, highly produced record and they succeeded.  Listening to it today, it doesn't sound like a product of the 80s (a good thing) and the songwriting is extremely varied and lyrically acute.  There are some songs on there that no-one ever seems to discuss ('Town Crier', 'Shabby Doll', 'Pidgin English' to name just three) that are as good as anything EC has ever written.

'Trust' tends to get overlooked, not least by Costello himself: but it's actually a very strong record, full of great songs and performances. The current version is bolstered by some high quality out-takes.  Check it out!

'My Aim Is True' is a good debut record, but not a great one, I feel.  Costello had yet to assemble the Attractions and his backing band here (a country rock group called Clover) are good, but not the ideal accompanists.  And it features two rather weak songs.  The same could be said about 'This Year's Model', though the winning performances of the Attractions cover up a couple of slightly lame compositions. 

I'm only being hypercritical here, because EC deserves to be judged by his own highest standards.

I'd agree with your point about self-consciousness: for an example of it all going wrong, listen to 'Spike', an exercise in bloated inertia more damning that anything ever put out by Yes, ELP or any of the other so-called 'dinosaur' bands that EC and his kind were supposed to have swept away.  'Tramp The Dirt Down' is one of the worst songs ever written by anybody, ever.