The Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band

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The Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band
General information
Genre (s) Modern jazz
founding 1960
resolution 1964
Founding members
Gerry Mulligan
Don Ferrara
Trumpet
 Danny Stiles
Trumpet
 Phil Sunkel
Wayne Andre
Alan Raph
Bob Brookmeyer
Dick Meldonian
Alto saxophone, clarinet
 Gene Quill
Jim Reider
Baritone saxophone, bass clarinet
Gene Allen
Bill Tackus
Dave Bailey
former members
Trumpet
 Conte Candoli
trombone
 Willie Dennis
Trumpet
 Nick Travis
Tenor saxophone
 Zoot sims
Drums
 Mel Lewis
Temporary members
bass
 Buddy Clark (1960)
Jim Hall (1962)
Alto saxophone
 Bob Donovan (1960)
bass
 Bill Crow (1961/62)
Trumpet
 Doc Severinsen (1962)
Alto saxophone
 Eddie Caine , Gene Allen (1962)
Baritone saxophone, bass clarinet
 Gene Allen (1962)
Drums
 Gus Johnson (1962)
trombone
 Jim Dahl (1957)
Bill Holman , Al Cohn , Johnny Mandel , Johnny Carisi , Gary McFarland and George Russell

The Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band was an American big band that existed at the beginning of the 1960s and was founded by the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan .

history

Gerry Mulligan had already written arrangements for Stan Kenton in early 1952 , when he had to reshuffle his Innovations Orchestra from 1950/51 for financial reasons . He then bought several arrangements of Mulligan and recorded two of them, "Young Blood" and "Swing House". These recordings influenced another young Kenton arranger, Bill Holman . In April Mulligan again played four pieces with a studio band for Columbia in a larger cast , the winds were Bob Brookmeyer , Lee Konitz , Charlie Rouse and Zoot Sims .

In the late 1950s, Norman Granz organized a few recording sessions where he paired Mulligan with soloists such as Paul Desmond , Ben Webster , Stan Getz and Johnny Hodges . After Mulligan had worked with his quartet for a while, after this line-up "did not allow him any new expressions", he considered founding his own big band and then put together a formation in March 1960 with the support of Granz, which was similar to the band, with which he was in the studio for Columbia in 1957. Another colleague of Mulligan in the search for the ideal arrangement was trombonist Bob Brookmeyer in 1960 , with whom he cast the band: six brass instruments , four woodwind instruments plus Mulligan himself on the baritone saxophone and the rhythm section consisting of drums and bass; an occupation that guaranteed "no loss of spontaneity".

“The new orchestra was only supposed to play music for attentive listening and was therefore called the Concert Jazz band . (...) [Their] arrangements did not even fall back on the traditional juxtaposition of woodwind and brass parts and avoided thumping collective passages or the use of riffs as stimulants. ”Mulligan explained on the cover text of the first LP:

“I wanted the same purity of sound and interweaving of melody lines that I had in the smaller ensembles. The clarinet that we have does not serve to guide the saxophone setting, but generally contributes to the whole with its sound. As for the soloists, I intend to use only a few people for most of the solos, so that they can be heard long enough to become familiar to the audience. "
Gerry Mulligan in the 1980s.
Photography by William P. Gottlieb .

These key soloists included Clark Terry , Bob Brookmeyer , Zoot Sims , Willie Dennis , Mel Lewis and Mulligan himself, who also played the clarinet and sometimes the piano; Brookmeyer, Al Cohn and Bill Holman were the first arrangers . From May to July 1960, the big band recorded their first studio album in New York; in the summer she performed at the Newport Jazz Festival . The second album was a recording from their tour of the Santa Monica Auditorium in Santa Monica, California in October 1960; a European tour followed in November, during which u. a. Other later recordings were made in Olympia (Paris) , Berlin and Zurich . In the meantime Conte Candoli , Willie Dennis and Zoot Sims had joined the band.

In December, the Concert Jazz Band performed in New York's Village Vanguard , which was also recorded. These included standards such as “ Body and Soul ”, “Come Rain Or Come Shine” and Johnny Mandel's film composition “Barbara's Theme” (with trumpeter Don Ferrara as soloist). On the 1961 tour, Mulligan included arrangers Johnny Carisi ("Israel"), Gary McFarland ("Weep" and "Chuggin '") and George Russell , who contributed the three-part suite "All About Rosie", which he wrote in 1957 Brandeis Jazz Festival. Mulligan himself “wrote only a few arrangements for the Concert Jazz Band ; usually he limited himself to the supervision and the occasional fine-tuning of the arrangements that his confidants put to him (to which he gave precise instructions). ”When Norman Granz's Verve company was sold to MGM in 1961 , the financial support from the label ended; Although two more albums were made, Mulligan was soon no longer able to maintain the big band regularly, but still performed with it until 1964, u. a. in New York's Birdland and reactivated them for record projects in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the early 2000s, Michael Cuscuna produced a 4-CD edition for Mosaic Records that contains all five Verve albums written between 1960 and 1962, plus eleven previously unreleased tracks.

Zoot Sims 1976

Appreciation

The downbeat author Don DeMichael, who gave the first album the highest rating, wrote at the time: “Mulligan's concept is an extension and development that we know from his quartet and sextet: the combination of extremes - simplicity with complexity, cool intellect with hot-blooded emotion, sophistication with courage. "

Joachim Ernst Berendt considered Mulligan's Concert Jazz band as well as the big band of Quincy Jones ( This Is How I Feel About Jazz ) to succeed the Basie Band and saw them “as something like a sophistication Count Basies , but also with much more contrapuntal Work. “ Bill Kirchner counts the Red Norvo Band of the late 1940s with the arrangements by Eddie Sauter as one of the few forerunners of the Concert Jazz Band .

For Arrigo Polillo , “in the large orchestra (…) harmonious sophistication with rhythmic power and simplicity with diversity were paired, while any form of showmanship was strictly frowned upon. (...) in the opinion of many it was the most interesting big band of the sixties and it was definitely the most original and aristocratic. "

Discography

Original albums
  • 1960 - Gerry Mulligan And The Concert Jazz Band (Verve MGV 8388)
  • 1960 - Gerry Mulligan And The Concert Jazz Band On Tour (Verve V / V6 8438)
  • 1960 - Gerry Mulligan And The Concert Jazz Band At The Village Vanguard (Verve MGV 8396)
  • 1961 - Gerry Mulligan And The Concert Jazz Band Present A Concert In Jazz (Verve V / V6 8415)
  • 1962 - Gerry Mulligan and The Concert Jazz Band '63 (Verve VLP 9037)
Bob Brookmeyer (right) with Clark Terry
More live releases
  • Concert Jazz Band - Live At The Olympia, Paris 1960 (Gambit)
  • Santa Monica 1960 ( Fresh Sound Records , ed. 2012)
  • Gerry Mulligan and The Concert Jazz Band featuring Zoot Sims ( TCB Records )
  • Concert in the Rain (Jazz Band, 1962/63) recording by Newport 1962
Compilations
  • The Arranger (Columbia PC34803, with additional recordings by Gene Krupa and Elliot Lawrence )
  • The Complete Verve Gerry Mulligan Concert Band Sessions (Mosaic MD4-221)
  • Verve Jazz Masters 36 - Gerry Mulligan (Verve 523342-2)

Web links

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c Liner Notes: Verve Jazz Masters 36 - Gerry Mulligan (Verve 523342 2)
  2. ↑ a b c d Polillo, p. 549.
  3. ↑ Discussion of the complete Mosaic edition ( Memento of the original from May 28, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at All About Jazz @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.allaboutjazz.com
  4. ↑ Polillo, p. 550.
  5. ↑ In the original: " It is an extension and expansion of Mulligan's concept as we've come to know it through his quartet and sextet: the combination of extremes - simplicity with complexity, cool intellectualism with hot-blooded emotion, sophistication with guts " - Gerry Mulligan page ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gerrymulligan.info
  6. ↑ Berendt / Huesmann, p. 517 ff.
  7. ↑ Polillo, p. 548.