Pop, Jazz Reviews : Mulligan Breathes Life Into Old Work at Ford

Gerry Mulligan’s performance with an 11-piece band before a sell-out crowd at the John Anson Ford Theatre on Saturday proved once again that a contemporary airing can breathe an amazing amount of life into a work composed long ago.

The renowned baritone saxophonist and composer went back 40 years, reviving selections transcribed from the memorable 1949 and 1950 “Birth of the Cool” sessions led by Miles Davis, and which Mulligan recently re-recorded. On those sessions, Davis, along with Mulligan and others, examined be-bop-based material with a fresh sound, pitting the higher timbres of trumpet and alto sax against such low brass as trombone, French horn and tuba.

Mulligan’s aggregation, which included such esteemed jazzmen as trumpeter Art Farmer and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, duplicated the instrumentation of the originals, except for the addition of an extra trumpet and a tenor sax-clarinet part. The band’s vibrant renditions of such well-preserved items as “Godchild,” “Boplicity” and “Moon Dreams” clearly demonstrated that these are not simply museum pieces, that they indeed have lasting power.

“Jeru” was distinctive for its dynamic climax, where the brass and reed sections tossed snappy lines back and forth. “Israel” began with the melody rendered by the low brass, then came the piercing brightness of trumpet and alto sax. Gil Evans’ dramatic arrangement of the oozingly slow “Moon Dreams” ended with a wall of soft sound, where instruments darted in and out, changing the work’s timbral color. The soloists were first-rate. Farmer’s ingenuity was quietly breathtaking as he took a series of brief phrases and strung them together into complex wholes. Konitz applied his one-of-a-kind sound, seemingly flat but really full of juice, to stretched-out notes and relaxed phrases that ran counter to the bubbling rhythm of a tune such as “Israel.” Mulligan swung with vitality and accessibility.