European Concert

Modern Jazz Quartet, The

album cover

The Jazz Embodiment of Individual and Collective Poise

Not a hair is out of place in the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet. No tie crooked, no cuff unlinked. Yet listen attentively to these purveyors of genteel dinner-jacket jazz and a different impression emerges: On this sparkling concert recording from 1960, the group pulls off the unlikely parlor trick of dishing great improvisational feats while minding its manners.

The MJQ began in 1951, and performed steadily, with several hiatuses, into the '90s. Its personnel remained mostly constant—the drummer Kenny Clarke was replaced by Connie Kay in 1955. This performance was relatively early in the group's history, but it doesn't sound like it: Already it has the cohesion often associated with veteran string quartets. The group was forever being compared to classical ensembles, in part because of the crystalline magic combination of piano and vibraphone, and in part because of the tight discipline of its pieces. While other jazz groups sought wideopen vistas, the MJQ choreographed its music down to the last countrapuntal riffs.

This program opens with "Django," a wistful Lewis original that pays homage to Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. The tune, the group's biggest "hit," has several distinct sections that shift from expansive baroquestyle chord sequences to hunkered-down blues vamps. Each soloist interprets the road map differently. Jackson plays elegant, questioning lines that yearn for more freedom, while Lewis, a crafty scene-setter who deploys the harmony of bebop and Debussy-style impressionism with equal facility, uses short, furtive phrases to encrypt the blues into his own code. The pianist's solo ends with a gradual rallentando, as the four musicians downshift from a vibrant swing pulse into something almost tempoless. This change is plenty dramatic but feels completely smooth, the imperceptible gearshifts of a luxury sedan. That's teamwork, at a high level, and there's lots and lots of it on display here.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1961, Atlantic
Key Tracks: "Django," "I Should Care," "Bag's Groove," "'Round Midnight"
Catalog Choice: Fontessa; The Complete Last Concert.
Next Stop: The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Further Out
After That: Cal Tjader: The Monterey Concert
Book Pages: 509–510