ABSTRACT
It is interesting to note what happens when Miles Davis plays numbers derived directly from the "tense" strand of Modern Jazz. Both Davis himself and the arranger John Carisi are professionally trained musicians, and the interrelationship between the jazzboy and the Juilliard man may be inaugurating a new phase in musical history. Gil Evans, who has brought Davis's intuitions to artistic realization, is a man of an older generation than Davis; and although so expertly professional, is paradoxically a self-taught musician whose training has been largely empirical. Gerry Mulligan's characteristic note is a gentle wistfulness in place of Charlie Parker's frenzy or Davis's more searing melancholy; people may relate him to the white tradition inaugurated by Bix Beiderbecke. Jazz polyphony implies tension between line and beat. In Boplicity, John Lewis breaks away from the sixteen-bar tyranny, elides the introductory theme with the first chorus, and inserts additional bridge passages in polyphony.
