Cool jazz
Related: cool - jazz - Miles Davis - music
Definition
Cool jazz is a type of jazz that is understated and subtle, and integrates elements of classical music. It is sometimes referred to as West Coast jazz or West Coast cool, as it was primarily practiced by musicians in the Los Angeles area; however, its popularity and practice was by no means limited to California. The Claude Thornhill Orchestra and Lennie Tristano first recorded cool jazz in the late 1940s. Thornhill's most popular song "Snowfall" is still played today.
Along with the bebop movement developed during the 1940s, the 1950s ushered in a lighter, more romantic style of jazz called "cool." Developed mainly from the perspective of white West Coast jazz musicians, cool jazz combined the melodic and swinging aspects of the earlier swing era with the harmonic and rhythmic developments of bebop. The roots of cool jazz can be traced back to various earlier styles, as well as a direction that trumpet player Miles Davis pursued during the late 1940s. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_jazz [May 2005]
Birth of the Cool
Birth of the Cool is an LP released in 1957 by Capitol Records in the USA, collecting eleven of the twelve sides recorded by the nonet featuring Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan and others in 1949 and 1950. Gil Evans, although he contributed one chart to the sessions acted as eminence grise to a group of musicians who had met in his small New York apartment above a Chinese laundry. The group performed live only briefly at the Royal Roost Club in New York.
The LP is considered seminal because it launched a reaction to the prominent bebop form in modern jazz. Though the break can be exaggerated (Charlie Parker participated in the discussions Evans led) it inspired a whole school of jazz musicians, particularly in California, usually referred to as the cool school. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_of_the_Cool [May 2005]
inspired by Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude (2000) - Dick Pountain, David Robins [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
see also: jazz