Birth of the Cool (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition Remastered)

iTunes Review

One could have fared worse than manning the trumpet chair in Charlie Parker’s superlative bebop quintet, considered in the late 1940s to be the apex of modern jazz. Yet, Miles Davis, as usual, had his own ideas. While he relished bop’s harmonic freedom, Davis knew he needed to temper the unbridled technical outbursts and breakneck tempos that defined the style in order for his own horn work to truly flower. He absorbed the ideas of the workshops at arranger Gil Evans’s Manhattan apartment, which were under the notable sway of Claude Thornhill, one of the first big-band leaders to embrace bop's innovations. That music--spacious, elegant, sophisticated, dexterous, a touch impassive--blended the orchestral breadth and dynamic texture of the big band with the fluidity and spontaneity of bop. Relying heavily on concepts of economy and restraint, Davis and his nonet (which included "oddities" such as tuba and French horn) recorded 12 landmark tracks in this style for Capitol in 1949 and 1950. With names like Evans, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, Kai Winding, J.J. Johnson, Al Haig, John Lewis, Max Roach, and Kenny Clarke aboard, Davis had the talented and sympathetic support needed to make his point, and tracks such as Mulligan’s “Jeru,” the Davis-Bud Powell collaboration “Budo,” Denzil Best’s “Move,” and Evans’s lush “Boplicity” remain jazz milestones.