Gerry Mulligan at Mid-Career, The 1970's and Onward - Steven A. Cerra
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“Along with so many other changes in American life during this decade, jazz takes some hard hits; its records are issued in dwindling numbers, radio play almost vanishes, club dates become fewer, and the festival scene degenerates into a malevolence of violent misbehavior climaxing with the destruction of stage set and piano following Mulligan and Dave Brubeck's aptly titled The Last Set at Newport in 1971, where one of Brubeck's compositions bears the sadly ironic title, "Open the Gates (Out of the Way of the People)."
That Gerry Mulligan and his music would not only survive the 1960s but actually grow and develop through these years is especially significant. Like the country itself, he would gain from the new age's advances but also be sufficiently cautious to avoid being swept up in (and away by) its more frivolous aspects.”
Jerome Klinkowitz, Listen Gerry Mulligan: An Aural Narrative in Jazz [1991]
“After the success of the various pianoless quartets in the early '50's Mulligan expanded to a sextet…. There was his marvelous Concert Jazz Band, thirteen strong; in the '70s the Age of Steam band, a continuation and extension of the Concert Jazz and. At the core of all the larger units has been the contrapuntal movement of the two-horn groups, expanded and embellished. All of Gerry's band reflect the same kind of intelligence cum emotion he puts into his writing and playing. And certainly his playing echoes aspects of his compositional ability.”
Ira Gitler, insert notes to Idol Gossip [Chiaroscuro CRD 155]
Compared to the first 50 or so years of its existence, Jazz wouldn’t be the same after the decade of the 1960s and neither would Gerry Mulligan.
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