Jazzmatazz Review - Miles Davis

Miles Davis

Birth of the Cool
(Capitol Jazz RVG Edition)

The unusual Miles Davis ensemble responsible for the Birth of the Cool sessions was more influential than its short life might indicate. The group had a three-week engagement at the Royal Roost in Sept. 1948 and had three recordings sessions in 1949 and 1950.

The Birth Of The Cool group had its genesis in Miles Davis's friendship with Gil Evans. As the head arranger for the Claude Thornhill band, Evans had helped develop some of the ideas used by the BOTC. The ensemble managed to transfer the lush orchestral sound of the Claude Thornhill band to a small ensemble while also integrating the music of bebop.

The group reduced the orchestra to a smaller unit of nine players that featured a French horn and a tuba for a round, mellow sound. The nonet featured arrangements by Gerry Mulligan (who was also an arranger for Thornhill), John Lewis, Gil Evans and John Carisi, which transformed fast and loud bebop to something slower, quieter and cooler. The harmonics of the music were influenced by European classical musical. The sound was impressionistic, vibratoless and static.

The group was more popular with fellow musicians than with the public. It was the seed for several future jazz movements, including the cool jazz and West Coast jazz movement of the 1950s. Gerry Mulligan carried on the concept with several of his groups and John Lewis brought some of its ideas into the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Miles himself went in the direction of hard bop in the 1950s as he recorded for Prestige and later Columbia. But at the end of the 1950's Miles worked again with Gil Evans, resulting in their landmark collaborative orchestral albums.

The studio recordings were originally released as 78 singles and 45 EPs. (Airshots of the live performances are available on The Complete Birth of the Cool.) An LP didn't appear until 1957. Up until now, all CD editions of the Birth of the Cool were mastered from the 1957 LP masters. For this reissue, Rudy Van Gelder has gone back to the master tapes for the best sound yet of one of the classics of modern jazz.

— Alan Lankin, February 2001

Release Date: 9 January 2001

Birth of the Cool:

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last update 24 February 2001