Out of the cool
| Out of the cool | ||||
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| Gil Evans studio album | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Impulses! | |||
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Format (s) |
LP, CD |
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Title (number) |
6th |
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running time |
44:06 |
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Studio (s) |
Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey |
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Out of the Cool is a jazz album by Gil Evans . It was recorded at the Jazz Gallery Club in New York City on November 18 and December 15, 1960 , and was released on Impulse! Records released.
The album
Out of the Cool was the result of two years of efforts by pianist and arranger Gil Evans to work with his own band again. Already in 1957 - during his collaboration with Miles Davis - he had produced the album Gil Evans and Ten with a loose formation , on which mostly colleagues from the Claude Thornhill Orchestra participated, and then recorded two albums ( New Bottle, Old Wine (1958 ) and Great Jazz Standards (1959)). They documented “the search for tonally convincing contrasts,” according to Evans biographer Raymond Horricks.
These albums ultimately act like a preliminary exercise for the emerging (first) "The Gil Evans Orchestra", which he introduced in the fall of 1960 in a six-week engagement at the New York club The Jazz Gallery . After a series of experiments, he had put together the instrumentation that he needed for his ideal sound; it consisted of two trumpets, three trombones (including a bass trombone), two alto saxophones, flutes and piccolo, a tuba, electric guitar, himself as a pianist, double bass and two drummers, Elvin Jones and Charlie Persip .
Evans biographer Horricks compares the first - and at fifteen minutes longest - piece La Nevada with Marcel Proust's research a la temps perdu and “the entrance into a cathedral; the whole thing is a microcosm of what the bandleader and arranger should take shape in his later projects ", and in classic albums such as The Individualism of Gil Evans (1963/64), Where Flamingos Fly (1970), Svengali (1973 ) and There Comes a Time (1975) reached one-time completion.
In contrast to his previous studio productions, Evans also had public appearances with this big band , which explains the degree of organization, but also the spontaneity of the music on the Out of the Cool album. Gil Evans achieved colors and textures of his unmistakable orchestral signature that had never been heard before. At the same time, La Nevada was a prime example of simplicity - it allowed long solos with passages of improvised music or head arrangements ; the “La Nevada” theme keeps coming back. This more "open" style, which was to characterize his work in the 1970s and 1980s in particular, differed from his earlier works, such as the Miles Ahead album from 1957 or Sketches of Spain (1959/60 with Miles Davis as main soloist) .
“La Nevada” begins with a solo piano figure by Gil Evans; the rhythm instruments then begin to play one after the other “and a high-intensity, medium-tempo playing sets in: Gil Evans uses the maracas to reinforce the part of the drums. The theme is broken into pieces by the trumpeters and flautists, with bits and pieces from guitarist Ray Crawford . Then the theme is performed by the pianist, three trombonists and finally the trombones together with the stuffed trumpets and woodwinds. ”Horricks emphasizes the level of the soloists in the Evans band at the time, Johnny Coles on trumpet, Tony Studd as bass trombonist, Budd Johnson as tenor saxophonist, finally the young Ron Carter on the double bass and the guitarist Ray Crawford.
Producer Creed Taylor recalls:
- “ La Nevada was not just an original composition, it was totally spontaneous - we had nothing [prepared] until the next appointment in Rudy Van Gelder's studio. Gil fooled around on the piano for a while, and then he started this thing and the rhythm section started too and the spark jumped on Gil. And he went over to Tony Studd the bass trombonist and said something to him. Then he wrote something on a book of matches. Just like that! I know it sounds like an exaggeration, but it was. Then he showed it to Tony, who began to play this character, and Gil passed it on to the other wind players. "
Twenty years later, Gil Evans recalled the recording session:
- “Six weeks in a row, six days a week. We knew the music. The way we played La Nevada was completely different from how we've ever played it before, but we always played it differently. The only difference in recording was Elvin (Jones). Charlie Persip was the drummer and Elvin came in and only played the shakers for the whole fifteen minutes. That's all he did and he kept it all together, letting Charlie do whatever he wanted. The shape - we didn't plan it. I think I only gave the order of the solos. "
Framed between the Evans compositions La Nevada and the last track Sunken Treasure , the album contains three foreign compositions, Where Flamingos Fly from the pen of his friend John Benson Brooks , which was based on the arrangement he made for Helen Merrill ( Dream of You , 1956 ), Kurt Weill's Bilbao Song and George Russell's Stratusphunk .
Rating of the album
Stein Crease quotes the contemporary criticism of down-beat author John S. Wilson of May 25, 1961:
- “Here we see Evans plain - not concerned with creating suitable settings for Miles Davis, not reworking old jazz standards, but experessing himself with his own band. And it's quiet a musical sight. For Evans is a full-fledged member of that select group of composer-arrangers who have completety instinctive musical personalities - a group in which Duke Ellington still remains head man and which includes, at the very least, Jelly Roll Morton and John Lewis . "
Richard Cook and Brian Morton, who gave the album the highest rating in their Penguin Guide to Jazz , consider Out of the Cool “Evans' masterpiece under its own name and the best example of jazz orchestration since the early Duke Ellington bands ”. It is above all the soloists - like Johnny Coles in the ghostly-looking “Sunken Treasure” or the lonely sounding Jimmy Knepper in Where Flamingoes Fly - who draw the listener's attention. When the recordings are played back several times, however, the serene sophistication of Evans' arrangements becomes apparent, giving a vigorous band the immediacy and elasticity of a quintet. For the authors, La Nevada is Evans' best, but also the least noticed score, which - typical of Evans - is based on very simple basic patterns.
Even Ian Carr points out the album Gil Evans' Discography and calls it "the well produced at perfektesten work that the bandleader has published under his own name. Coles has developed a musical personality strong enough to take on the role of Miles Davis in the Gil Evans Orchestra. "
The All Music Guide also gave it a four-star rating ; Thom Jurek highlighted the importance of Miles Davis as his partner in the previous Sketches of Spain project , which was completed in mid-1960; Evans learned a lot from Miles Davis about improvisation, instinct and musical space, as well as orchestral colors, textures and the creation of dynamic tension. Evans orchestrates less here, but rather leaves it to the rhythm section from Elvin Jones, Charlie Persip, Ron Carter and Ray Crawford to drive the action. The music on the album is of a wonderful variety, framed by two outstanding Evans compositions, La Nevada and Sunken Treasure .
According to Evans biographer Stephanie Stein Crease, Out of the Cool represents an important stage in Evans' artistic expression. “Titles like La Nevada were Gil's answer to jazz of the early 1960s - namely, the violent exploratory improvisation by John Coltrane , whose music moved him profoundly. Gil's new work integrated written and improvised things [...] He created a completely different world of sound than the one he had created with and for Miles Davis and his previous two standard albums - [which] now [seem] so harmless in comparison! Now he reached - albeit subtly - the openly laid out music that touched the boundaries of chaos, which would make up the majority of his later work. ”Stein Crease also addresses the“ gloomy emotional landscape ”that Evans created here; this is "a terrain that was forced to explore. From there comes the scream - as heard for the first time in Porgy and Bess - which should find its equivalent in everything that followed in Gil's work "
Title of the album
Gil Evans Orchestra - Out of the Cool (Impulse A (S) 4)
- La Nevada (Evans) -15:33
- Where Flamingos Fly (Brooks, Courlander, Thea) -5: 11
- Bilbao Song (Brecht, Weill) -4:10
- Stratusphunk (Evans, Russell) -8:00
- Sunken Treasure (Evans) -4:15
- Sister Sadie (Silver) -6:57
literature
- Raymond Horricks: Gil Evans . Spellmount, Tunbridge Wells 1984, ISBN 0-946771-40-5 .
- Richard Cook & Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 .
- Stephanie Stein Crease: Gil Evans: Out of the Cool - His life and music. A Cappella Books / Chicago Review Press, Chicago 2002, ISBN 978-1-55652-493-6 .
Web links
- Out of the Cool at Allmusic (English)