Gil Evans: Stratusphunk
Track
Stratusphunk
Group
Gil Evans
CD
Out of the Cool (Impulse IMPD-186)
Musicians:
Gil Evans (piano), Johnny Coles (trumpet), Tony Studd (bass trombone), Ray Crawford (guitar),
and others in 14-piece band
.Composed by George Russell. Arranged by Gil Evans
.Recorded: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 18, 1960
Rating: 96/100 (learn more)
Gil Evans and George Russell first paced together in Birth of the Cool's modernity ward—the late-1940s salon in Gil's unheated, one-room, Manhattan basement apartment behind a Chinese laundry. Even then they were forward-thinkers. No surprise that they should figure in this early masterwork of Space Age Jazz. "Stratusphunk" is a blues with a walking bass that Evans ingeniously assigns to bass trombone, gradually leading to a slap-tongued saxophone theme (where the instruments are audibly fingered and tongued but not blown) that's as spacey as the electronic music in Hollywood's sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet (1956). And Gil didn't need a roomful of overwrought oscillators!
Reviewer: Alan Kurtz
Tags: impulse · space age jazz
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