Birth of the Cool

Birth of the Cool compiles twelve sides Miles Davis recorded with a specially assembled nine-piece band across three 1949-1950 New York sessions, growing out of a brief but pivotal engagement the group had played at the Royal Roost in 1948. Davis conceived the project with close collaborators Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan, drawing on writing contributions from John Lewis, John Carisi and George Wallington, and on the unusual instrumentation of French horn and tuba to create softer, more arranged ensemble textures than the prevailing bebop idiom. Coming immediately after Davis stepped out from Charlie Parker's quintet, the sessions announced him as a bandleader and conceptual arranger rather than simply a virtuoso soloist, a role he would return to repeatedly across his career. Though the original singles sold modestly on release, the music's restrained tempos, chamber-like counterpoint and unusual voicings anticipated the cool and West Coast jazz movements that flourished in the years before Capitol finally compiled the sides as this LP. The record is now regarded as one of the most influential documents in jazz history, foundational to cool jazz and an early example of "third stream" thinking that blended jazz with classical arranging sensibilities. Its collaborative writing and unusual sonic palette shaped generations of arrangers and small-group composers, and it remains central to Miles Davis's legacy as an artist whose impact often came as much through concept, personnel and arranging as through his trumpet playing.