EN / RU

Lecture-concert. “Cool Jazz. Bridges Between Centuries”. Lev Kushnir’s Quartet
Running time:
2 parts by 45 minutes
6+
22 March 2020 Sunday 15.00 Chamber hall
15.00 Chamber hall

Lecture-concert.
“Cool Jazz. Bridges Between Centuries”.
Lev Kushnir’s Quartet

The concert is cancelled for reasons beyond the control of the concert hall

Narrator – Mikhail Mitropolsky

The inner fire of Cool Jazz

The history of jazz shows a constant shifting between more hot and more cool music.

But the very style called “cool jazz” that appeared in the mid-20th century, only formally cooled the music energy. Actually, the energy of jazz then moved from external effects to the inside of the music played. The new approach, based on complicated arrangements with collective improvisation, interested the new generation of musitians in the 40’s. One of the first of that kind was Miles Davies who, with a little help of his combos (including a nonet!), released an iconic “Birth of the Cool” via Capitol in 1949. In the 50’s, cool combos were usually quartets and quintets. Saxmen Paul Desmond, Stan Getz, and Gerry Mulligan, trumpeter Chet Baker, trombone player Bob Brookmeyer, along with pianist Dave Brubeck became the leading forces of the cool. Then the tendency was to fuse cool with baroque, the method championed first and foremost by the Modern Jazz Quartet led by pianist John Lewis.

At the turn of the 50’s and 60’s, an interesting and fashionable trend was born, when cool musicians headed for South America. There they managed to get acquainted with Brazilian samba. That’s how bossa nova was conceived, to later spread like wildfire first in the USA, then in both Americas, and Europe.

The narrator, Mikhail Mitropolsky, is the Russia’s most famous and oldest jazz critic, and a member of the international The Jazz Journalists Association (JJA). Mitropolsky has been studying jazz and beyond for nearly 50 years now! He is a radio presenter, writer, and lecturer.

Pianist Lev Kushnir is one of the few musicians capable to recreate the atmosphere of early part of 20th century, when new ideas were flourishing. And it’s very important, since cool as a style implies a very strong inner feeling combined with rationality and certain intellectuality of a musical form. The biography of the musician helped him do this. In 70-89’s Kushnir studied jazz in a legendary studio called “Moskvorechiye”, and at the same time was a student of the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys. This “alloy” prompted him to further develop his usic skills, so later Lev Kushnir graduated from Gnessin’s college, and his first professional job as musician was at Moscow All Stars band, then Kadans of the famous trumpeter German Loukianov. Не even took part in the Moscow concert of Dizzy Gillespie! Concerts with Gary Bartz, Debora Brown, and Tal Farlow among any other jazz celebrities, as well as European, American, and European tours are in the musician’s CV.