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| The Complete Verve Gerry Mulligan Concert Band Gerry Mulligan searched a dozen years to find this sound, and finally achieved it: The Verve Concert Jazz Band Sessions. In many ways, Mulligan’s “Concert Jazz Band” recordings from 1960 to 1962 were the culmination of ideas that began forming in the late 1940s when he was writing for big bands, and for the Birth of the Cool sessions led by Miles Davis. He loved the richness of big band instrumentation. But not the heaviness. He liked the fleeter feel of the Davis-led sessions, but the nonet might have been a little confining. And besides, Mulligan couldn’t call it his. His famous “piano-less quartet” with Chet Baker (and later, valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer) provided the first step of the solution. It was an extraordinarily nimble group. Just the perfect amount of rhythm. Just enough soloists to not muddy the band’s point-of-view. And maybe just a little unsatisfying for the writer-arranger. He augmented the quartet with additional horns in 1953 to create a tentette. And in 1957, to a band with seven brass, five saxes, and rhythm. At each stage, the band was recorded, and lasting compositions resulted. But Mulligan found he had pushed it too far. The arranger who wanted more musicians in the sandbox was back to a sound he judged too ponderous. From a re-constituted quartet in New York in 1960, Mulligan began to build out the Concert Jazz Band. Six brass. Four reeds, plus Mulligan on baritone sax. Drums and bass providing the rhythm. It was all he needed to provide the wallop you get when a big band is really cooking, without the loss of spontaneity. For the Concert Jazz Band, Mulligan and Brookmeyer (virtually a co-leader and the principal writer) brought together musicians who could make things up on the spot within a written-out chart, because Mulligan wanted it not-too-written-out. He employed writers who got it (in addition to Brookmeyer and Mulligan, Al Cohn, Bill Holman, Johnny Mandel, George Russell and a young Gary McFarland contributed charts) and musicians who could hack it. The Verve recordings--collected for the first time ever in Mosaic’s new box set -- attest to the virtues of hard work and patience. This was a big band that played complex, intriguing, and playful charts like it was a tight little ensemble. The voicings rang through, and they could pop with authority and precision, and still dampen down in support of Mulligan’s airy, light-hearted solos. Some numbers were frames for blowing – others, refined works of tantalizing counterpoint. You won’t find another sound like it in jazz, and that’s no surprise since it took Mulligan himself such a long time to craft it. The band featured an array of stellar soloists and sidemen. In addition to Mulligan and Brookmeyer, the personnel included Don Ferrara, Danny Stiles. Phil Sunkel, Nick Travis, Clark Terry, Doc Severinsen and Conte Candoli among the trumpeters; Wayne Andre, Alan Raph, Tony Studd and Willie Dennis along with Brookmeyer on trombones; Jim Reider, Gene Quill, Bob Donovan, Eddie Caine, Gene Allen, Dick Meldonian and Zoot Sims in the reeds section; Bill Tackus, Buddy Clark, or Bill Crow on bass, and Gus Johnson, Dave Bailey, or Mel Lewis on drums. On one session, Jim Hall joins them playing guitar. The four-CD set includes eight studio tracks and three live performances that have never appeared on record or disc before this release. Liner notes are by saxophonist/composer/arranger Bill Kirchner, who documents every chart performed by the concert band--even the unrecorded ones. And the booklet contains a number of rare and revealing session photographs. These were the sessions that introduced a whole new concept in large ensemble writing, arranging and performing. But for Mulligan, who was so integral to the Birth of the Cool, and prominent in crafting the piano-less small group, influencing others seems to have come naturally. write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Jazz News :: home page |