Gerry Mulligan Cds [NL]

Gerry Mulligan - Dutch Jazz Orchestra CDs

Moon Dreams - Rediscovered music of Gil Evans en Gerry Mulligan.

1. Spanish Dance

Enrique Granados, comp., Gil Evans, arr.

Solo: Rob van Bavel, p.

Claude Thornhill’s band book featured a number of arrangements of European concert works. Included were Edvard Grieg’s In The Hall of the Mountain King (from The Peer Gynt Suites 1 & 2) and The Butterfly (Le Papillon), Modest Mussorgsky’s The Old Castle (from Pictures at an Exhibition, recorded as The Troubadour), Träumerei by Robert Schumann, The Arab Dance from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and The Hungarian Dance no. 5 from Brahms. The latter two were arranged by Claude Thornhill, while the others are by Gil Evans. Evans also wrote an arrangement of the fifth dance (Andaluza) from Enrique Granados’s 12 Danzas Españolas, opus 37. The version that was recorded by the Thornhill orchestra in 1948 is at significant variance with the version recorded here, although there are also striking similarities, which leads one to think that these scores are somehow related.

2. Rose of the Rio Grande

Edgar Leslie, Harry Warren, Ross Gorman, comp., Gerry Mulligan, arr.

Solos: Ruud Breuls, tp; Nils van Haften, bs; Martijn van Iterson, g; Ruud Breuls, tp; Ilja Reijngoud, tb.

Like so many big bands, the Claude Thornhill was forced out of business by the end of the 1940s. In 1953, the orchestra came together once more, for a two-day recording session. Among the scores on the stands was this Gerry Mulligan arrangement, which he had written in all likelihood for the earlier installment of the Thornhill band. The 1953 two-day Thornhill orchestra still showed itself to be still a great band, but the recordings suffer from rather poor recording quality and an overdone delay.

3. The Happy Stranger

John Benson Brooks, comp., Gil Evans, arr.

The Happy Stranger is another score from the Thornhill band book, but it was never recorded in its full glory. Two versions survive, but they differ from the full version presented here. Thornhill was often featured in similar dreamy “one-finger piano” themes, with as most famous piece Snowfall, the band’s opening and closing theme. Evans options may have been limited in such subdued mood pieces, but this arrangement shows his mastery of orchestration. Note the tuba at the beginning, and the fluttering clarinets. Compared to the known versions, this track features a different intro, an extra chorus and a different coda.

4. Poor Little Rich Girl

Noël Coward, comp., Gerry Mulligan, arr.

Solos: Simon Rigter, ts; Ruud Breuls, tp.

Next to the ramntic repertoire that was one of the hallmarks of the Thornhill orchestra, the band could swing seriously--a prerequisite for any orchestra that sought to please the dancers. For such occassions, Mulligan was at hand to turn popular material into swinging affairs. Poor Little Rich Girl is a case in point. Mulligan has made a tight arrangement out this rather romantic song from Noël Coward’s 1924 musical play On with the Dance. It is used here to feature some of the Dutch Jazz Orchestra’s great soloists.

5. Joost at the Roost

Gerry Mulligan, comp., arr.

Solos: Marcel Serierse, d; Morris Kliphuis, French horn

This fantastic Mulligan original must have been written close to the time when Miles Davis took his famous nonet into the Royal Roost. The Royal Roost, located at Broadway and 47th Street, opened in early-1948, and mostly featured modern jazz. Promoters were disk-jockey Symphony Sid (Sid Torin) and jazz entrepreneur Monte Kay (co-founder of the later Birdland), who managed to engage top-shelve musicians, including Lucky Thompson, Allen Eager, Tadd Dameron, Miles Davis, Kai Winding, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Curly Russell, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. In September they booked Miles Davis, who alternately appeared with his new nonet and a quintet. An arrangmenent of Joost at the Roost for the nonet survives as well. Given the prominence of French horns in the 1940s Evans-Mulligan sound, it is only fitting that Morris Kliphuis is featured as soloist on the instrument here.

6. Easy Living Medley

Consists of Easy Living, Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, comp.; Everything Happens to Me, Thomas Adair and Matt Dennis, comp.; Moon Dreams, Chummy MacGregor and Johnny Mercer, comp.; Gil Evans, arr.

Solos: Martijn van Iterson, g; Marco Kegel, as; Simon Rigter, ts.

The notorious talks at Gil Evans’s place, where musicians and arrangers tended to gather, led to plans to form a “dream band,” as Mulligan later called it, a rehearsal orchestra in which they could try out their latest ideas. Gradually, Evans, Mulligan and Davis decided that the “arranger’s band” would consist of nine pieces, since that was the minimum number of musicians needed to emulate the Thornhill sound. Curiously enough, around the same time, Evans was experimenting with a line-up that was even larger than a regular big band, with no less than eight woodwinds, two French horns and a tuba. For this band, which possibly rehearsed but never recorded, he arranged Lover Man and the Easy Living Medley, which ends with a breathtaking version of Moon Dreams. It largely spells out the famous score he wrote for the Birth of the Cool sessions, and foreshadows Evans’s later work for Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess.

7. The Major and the Minor

Gerry Mulligan, comp., arr.

Solos: Marco Kegel, as; Ruud Breuls, tp; Martijn Sohier, tb.

Gerry Mulligan was the main contributor to the Birth of the Cool recordings. He arranged Godchild, Deception and Darn that Dream and brought four original compositions: Jeru, Venus de Milo, Rocker, and the aforementioned unused Joost at the Roost. Although he was building a reputation in the 1940s as an arranger (Mulligan was still hardly known for his baritone playing), he was clearly invested in writing original compositions. The Major and the Minor, never recorded, is one of those works, in which Mulligan brightly mixes a modern swing idiom with the latest bebop ideas.

8. Yardbird Suite

Charlie Parker, comp., Gil Evans, arr.

Solos: Rob van Bavel, p; Marco Kegel, as; Ruud Breuls, tp; Martijn van Iterson, g.

Some textbooks maintain that the Birth of the Cool was a reaction to bebop, but the musicians and arrangers involved were equally committed to bop as to the cooler orchestral jazz, and there are no signs whatsoever that they felt any need to favor one idiom over the other. It is unlikely that at the time they even perceived the music as belonging to different categories--categories which are hard to maintain to start with. At any rate, Gil Evans closely knew the bebop front men, and he arranged some of their latest works: Donna Lee, Anthropology and Yardbird Suite. The version presented here has a great intro and an extra chorus, both cut for the issued Thornhill recording.

9. Lover Man

Jimmy Davis, Ram Ramirez, Jimmy Sherman, comp., Gil Evans, arr.

Solos: Rob van Bavel, p; Marco Kegel, as; Ruud Breuls, tp; Martijn van Iterson, g.

Of course, Thornhill connoisseurs know Evans’s recorded arrangement of Lover Man, but the present version is written for the mysterious rehearsal orchestra that must have consisted of an extended Thornhill orchestra line-up. There is no knowing which score came first: the regular big band score or the extended score recorded here, but both are clearly related since they do share some material. Lover Man is proof of Evans’s superb skills at orchestration.

10. Brew’s Tune

Gerry Mulligan, comp., arr.

Solos: Mike Booth, tp; Marco Kegel, as; Mike Booth tp; Simon Rigter ts; John Ruocco, cl.

Milton Moore, nicknamed Brew for his heavy drinking, briefly played tenor saxophone in the Thornhill band in the late 1940s. Whether the hitherto unrecorded Brew’s Tune is dedicated to him, or whether Mulligan indeed took one of Brew’s tunes as the basis for this piece remains unknown. The theme itself may be not too remarkable, but Mulligan skillfull arrangenment is inspired.

11. Broadway

Wilbur Bird, Teddy McRae, William Woode, comp., Gerry Mulligan, arr.

Solos: John Ruocco, cl; Ilja Reijngoud, tb

This Mulligan arrangement of Broadway was apparently never recorded by Thornhill’s orchestra, although the score seems to be tailored for the leader’s solo piano work. As many of the other rediscovered pieces on this CD, the score and parts were in preserved in the two archives that currently best document the music of the Claude Thornhill orchestra: the Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark, New Jersey, and the Drury University Archives in Springfield, Missouri. The rediscovered Broadway shows that Mulligan was one of the most important architects of 1940s orchestral jazz.

Recorded April 27-28, 2006, at Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum, the Netherlands

The Dutch Jazz Orchestra wishes to thank Anita Evans, Miles Evans and Joanne Ko of The Gil Evans Estate, Franca R. Mulligan and Cathie Phillips of Mulligan Publishing Co., Jeff Sultanof, David Joyner, Fred Stride, the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, Drury University Archives, Stephanie Stein Crease, and John Howland.