Cool Jazz

Em 1946, após o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial, houve uma migração de músicos de jazz da Califórnia para Nova Iorque. Lá entraram em contato com músicos de bebop, mas bastante influenciados por músicos de swing como Lester Young e Coleman Hawkins, incorporaram um tom mais maduro. A nova variante, o cool jazz, era leve e mais romântico que o bebop; era uma abordagem mais simples ao ritmo, ainda que preservando a harmonia do bebop. A orquestra de Claude Thornhill, com arranjos de Gil Evans, gravou o estilo na segunda metade da década de 1940; a canção mais famosa de Thornhill, "Snowfall", é tocada ainda hoje. Outros músicos do estilo incluem Lennie Tristano e seus colegas Billy Bauer e Warne Marsh. O estilo cresceu na década de 1950, atraindo a atenção de músicos como Miles Davis, cujas gravações Birth of the Cool (1949) e Kind of Blue (1959) estão entre os álbuns de jazz mais populares já produzidos.
The classic mixture of these various influences was during the 1949-1950 sessions now best known under their later title: Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool (1950). Despite Davis's top billing, this was in fact a collective project that drew together many players and arrangers/composers from the period: Davis, Evans, Mulligan, Konitz, John Lewis, Gunther Schuller, and Johnny Carisi, although, according to Evans, Miles Davis was the musician who best represented this style of jazz. Issued only shortly after bebop had begun to establish itself, this recording offered an alternative aesthetic that was initially unpopular. It sold poorly and the band did not last long, but it eventually became a jazz classic.
Despite its beginning in New York, Cool Jazz later became identified strongly with West Coast jazz. Californian group The Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded the popular Cool Jazz album Time Out in 1959, which scored #2 on the Billboard "Pop Albums" chart. The Cool Jazz influence stretches into such later developments as Bossa Nova, modal jazz (especially in the form of Davis's Kind of Blue 1959), and even Free Jazz (in the form of Jimmy Giuffre's 1961-1962 trio).