Cool Jazz

What it means

Cool jazz is a jazz style that emerged around 1949/50, chiefly in New York and later California, marked by soft, restrained timbres, moderate tempos, and carefully worked, chamber-music-like arrangements. It developed as a counter-movement to the nervous intensity and fast tempos of bebop.

Musical use

A defining influence was the nonet led by Miles Davis, whose 1949/50 recordings were later released under the title Birth of the Cool and used arrangements with unusual brass instrumentation such as French horn and tuba. Other central figures included Gerry Mulligan, whose piano-less quartet with Chet Baker gained wide recognition in the late 1940s and 1950s, and numerous musicians based on the American West Coast, whose style also became known as West Coast jazz.

Cool jazz should be distinguished from bebop, whose fast, virtuosic improvised lines and sharp accents it replaces with longer, more song-like phrases and a lighter, quieter overall sound. It also differs from the later hard bop, which arose partly as a reaction to cool jazz, returning to a more blues-rooted, rhythmically sharper style of playing.

Performance practice

When you play or improvise in a cool jazz style, aim for a soft, controlled tone and phrases that feel song-like rather than virtuosic. Give the arrangement room: cool jazz relies more on through-composed horn writing and timbre than on continuous soloistic fireworks.