NYJO: "Birth of the Cool"
It’s New York, 1949. The new, innovative, music known as bebop has everyone’s attention and a 23-year-old musician fresh from a 4-year stint in the band of one of the key innovators of that style, Charlie Parker, is looking to make a recording. In a decision that would become a hallmark of his career, he chooses to move away from what was expected and look in a completely different direction. The idea is to record music which, although still using the new modern harmonies, is gentler, more composed, thoughtful and swinging.
To this end he gathers around him a group of 9 equally likeminded young musicians and composers. Amongst these are: baritone saxophonist/writer/arranger Gerry Mulligan, who was to go on to form the first pianoless quartet with trumpeter/singer Chet Baker; pianist/composer/arranger John Lewis who would go on to find international fame with his chamber jazz group MJQ; 22 year old alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, whose fluid, liquid, sound was to influence a whole generation of alto sax players, most notably Dave Brubecks’s sax player Paul Desmond, who wrote the iconic “Take 5” and Gil Evans, the composer/arranger whose vision, along with Mulligan’s, was the driving force behind the whole project and who himself would later find international recognition with a series of studio albums including “Sketches of Spain”.
The whole canon of 12 tunes was recorded over 3 sessions between 1949 and 1950 and after the last session, the band leader moved on to search out other new styles and formats. But because of its unique flavour the music lived on and has been credited with starting what was to become known as the “cool jazz” movement. In 1957 Capitol Records finally brought all the sessions together on one album which, with an acknowledgement to the huge influence the music had exerted, simply called the album “The Birth of The Cool”. Oh, and the name of that young band leader? Miles Davis…
Tonight, celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Miles’s birth, the UK’s premier jazz education and performing ensemble for emerging young professional musicians, NYJO (whose former members include Amy Winehouse), debut fresh new arrangements alongside the historic repertoire from those iconic 1949/1950 sessions. With a nonet led by trumpeter Tom Stringer and featuring some of the most talented young musicians in the UK this promises to be a standout gig!
Photo by Taylor Hylton