Birth of the Cool

Teviot Row, Edinburgh

This celebration of The Birth of the Cool, Miles Davis’s hugely influential nonet project, was recreated in the perversely sweltering Teviot Row hall. BOTC, of course, was far from “cool” in the sense of suggesting casual and dispassionate, but was a striking emergence of innovatively arranged and hugely influential music from the bebop crucible.

Under musical director and enthusiastically animated conductor Richard Ingham, 70 years on from Davis’s band broadcasting from the Royal Roost club in New York, the nine-piece on stage were a mixture of seasoned Scots jazzers and younger players, with trumpeter Colin Steele channelling Miles, stylishly though not slavishly, Allon Beavoisin taking on Gerry Mulligan’s baritone sax role and Martin Kershaw playing alto in place of Lee Konitz. Other players included pianist Alan Benzie and trombonist Rory Ingham, plus bass, drums, French horn and tuba.

From the opening Boplicity, we were back in a distinctive and at the time groundbreaking sound world, with the catchy trumpet hook of Mulligan’s Venus de Milo, Beauvoisin’s baritone sax floating over the rich ensemble drift of Moon Dreams while Kershaw’s alto sustained that long, hanging note through languidly shifting harmonies. There was the jostling counterpoint of John Carisi’s classic Israel, while the beefy riffing of Godchild had baritone sax playing off tuba for a pleasing bass buzz.

All solos were concise and to the point, as all the BOTC numbers were relatively short, but, despite the nonet’s brief life, its music remains surprisingly timeless.