1. I Believe In You - Quartet - 1962
2. A Ballad - Stan Getz in Hi-Fi
3. My Funny Valentine - The CJB - LP
4. Israel - Presents A Concert
5. Line For Lyons - Desmond Quartet
6. Manoir De Mes Reves - The CJB - LP
7. Blueport - Village Vanguard
8. Utter Chaos (Unreleased)

February 24, 1962

October 22, 1957

July 25-27, 1960

July 10-11, 1961

August 27, 1957

December 10, 1960

 LINER NOTES

Throughout this challenging spectrum, the essential lineaments of Mulligan's jazz conception have always been unmistakably clear. They include economy, clarity of line and emotion, humor, an understanding of and affection for the whole jazz tradition, and the capacity to find new forms from within that tradition rather than from outside. Another primary characteristic of Mulligan is that he has refused to allow himself to be limited for too long a time to any one format. He does not change, however, because of changes in jazz fashion. He is temperamentally eager for new experience but he is also reflective in that he has the need to stop occasionally and absorb past experience from a new perspective. As Mulligan told Gene Lees in a Down Beat interview, "My bands last two years, more or less, and then I take time off to digest what I've been doing. Each band is another experience. I may put the same group back together ...but I like to take those periods off."

In all the various contexts in which he has appeared - and a number of them are illustrated in this album - Mulligan, furthermore, has always insisted that there be ample room for spontaneity. Even the scores he commissions and occasionally writes for his big band are so structured that they can be altered in the course of performance - as the spirit moves his colleagues. It is his contention that form not only need not inhibit freedom, but that if the form is clear and pliable enough, it can stimulate an improviser to find more meaningful freedom within that form.

Another element pervasive in all of Mulligan's music is relaxation. All his groups, of whatever size, are identifiable because of the flowing ease of interplay between their members. "The function of the arranger," Mulligan told Lees, "is to set up a framework for the players to express themselves - and not only the soloists but the whole ensemble. This is applicable to the big band as well. That's why there are those improvised ensemble passages. I want things to arise as naturally as possible."

This "naturalness" is most immediately perceived in the quartet context, as in the opening I Believe in You. To function at Mulligan's level in a quartet setting, however, requires more than rhythmic fluidity and the capacity to be relaxed. Also necessary are alertness, a melodic imagination comparable to Mulligan's, and ideally, wit as well. Bob Brookmeyer, accordingly, is a superior counterpoise to Mr. Mulligan.

The A Ballad performance with Stan Getz underlines another aspect of the "essential" Mulligan. Mulligan has become one of the most lyrical of all contemporary jazzmen. It is a lyricism, however, which will not suffer sentimentality. And it is a lyricism drawn from an uncommonly difficult instrument on which to be gentle and reflective. Mulligan has made the baritone saxophone capable of soft-edged introspection without diluting any of its virility. And on this track, the contrasting textures of Getz and Mulligan make for particularly beguiling lyrical interplay.

The Mulligan big band of recent years has represented a further stage in his evolution as a leader, as an organizer. Mulligan, in fact, has long possessed the musical equivalent of "natural leadership." At jam sessions and during the more informal sections of the jazz festivals, it is almost always Mulligan who takes charge - suggesting solo order and marshalling the collective improvising in the background. With his big band, Mulligan has proved his skill at selecting the right personnel along with the optimum arrangements for his kind of orchestral jazz. His is a conception which takes advantage of the increased color range of a large ensemble along with its scope of soloists without losing the buoyancy and unselfconsciousness of Mulligan's smaller units. In My Funny Valentine, for example, there is a remarkable intimacy of mood for a large orchestra. The orchestra, however, is deftly used complementary color behind Mulligan's affecting solo.

A clearer indication of how the Mulligan big band retains the feeling of spontaneity of a small combo is Israel, the comosition John Carisi wrote for the Davis-Mulligan-Lewis nine piece unit in the late 1940's. The trombone solo is by Bob Brookmeyer. The band, whether in the foreground or behind Brookmeyer and Mulligan plays with a lithe ease which comes partly from Mulligan's skill as a personnel director and partly from the way he supervises the scores for his band. As Bob Brookmeyer has cautioned colleagues, "We're having a rehearsal. Bring your erasers." Just as Mulligan does not suffer sentimentality, he also does not suffer superfluity.

When Mulligan is in a mood which combines wit and lyricism, there are few jazzmen who equal Paul Desmond's qualifications for joining him in dialogue. In Line for Lyons, the melodic inventiveness of both is particularly well set off, most notably in the closing contrapuntal interplay.

Django Reinhardt's Manoir Des Mes Reves is a temptation. Its romanticism could so easily slide into saccharine sighing, but onse the mood is set by the ensemble, Mulligan enters with a dynamism and clarity which give the performance a tensile strength while still maintaining the ardor of its mood.

One of Mulligan's more remarkable achievements has been his ability to so structure his big band that it not only communicates the informality of a small combo, but it can also project the kind of uninhibited high spirits which usually are so difficult to maintain in a large collective sense. This performance of Art Farmer's Blueport is an excellent example in terms of the solos by Mulligan, Brookmeyer and tenor saxophonist Jim Reider followed by the extended joust between Mulligan and Clark Terry. Also worth noting is the spareness with which Mulligan uses the big band in this number. He does not consider it necessary to use all the resources of a large orchestra all the time. Accordingly, a Mulligan big band is able to take on multiple shapes in the course of an evening without distorting its basic identity. And very much a part of that identity is the ensemble looseness (not to be confused with carelessness) which is so infectiously evident in Mulligan's closing theme, Utter Chaos.

Some years ago, when I was researching a profile of Gerry Mulligan, the clearest definition of the "essential" Mulligan I could find came from George Wein, festival director and pianist. That definition still holds, as this album demonstrates: "Gerry is a jazz musician, not a modernist or a traditionalist. He doesn't have to search for roots ...And he is also a complete leader. That's his greatest attribute. He'll be the leader of any group he sits in with, and his own unit is a complete reflection of his moods and yet express themselves . . . As a writer-player, he is not an experimenter in the sense that he is consciously trying to be different, but he is also never satisfied and is constantly concerned with developing his music. He works through the tradition, how ever, not against it."

In retrospect, the Mulligan record for the past fifteen years has been both durable and consistent. Considering the decades ahead of him and the fact that he is still unremittingly fascinated by the challenges and possibilities of jazz, Mulligan's future in the music should be an absorbing route to follow. His combination of penetrating curiosity and his insistence that he not be swept into any development until he's fully understood where he's been guarantee a balanced maturity in Mulligan's music, in whatever directions it goes. When wit and unpretentiousness are added to these qualities, the music is also sure to reflect the essence of Mulligan's credo: "Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on."

Notes by NAT HENTOFF