Sound
West Coast jazz sometimes featured a rhythm section that omitted the use of a piano, guitar, or any chordal instrument, tending to a more open and freer sound, popularized by the famous record by Gerry Mulligan The Original Quartet with Chet Baker (Blue Note, 1998). Another characteristic is the inclusion of non-standard jazz instruments like the French horn and tuba. Gil Evans' classic arrangement on the Birth of the Cool album featured these instruments at a time when the West Coast style was emerging. The sound can be thought as a reaction to the franticness and complexity some listeners found in bebop.
Read more about this topic: West Coast Jazz
Famous quotes containing the word sound:
“I am already kindly disposed towards you. My friendship it is not in my power to give: this is a gift which no man can make, it is not in our own power: a sound and healthy friendship is the growth of time and circumstance, it will spring up and thrive like a wildflower when these favour, and when they do not, it is in vain to look for it.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“The mastery of one’s phonemes may be compared to the violinist’s mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor’s renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.”
—W.V. Quine (b. 1908)
“America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)