Birth Of The Cool

Birth of the Cool is a compilation album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released in 1957 on Capitol Records. It compiles eleven songs recorded by Davis's nonet for the label over the course of three sessions during 1949 and 1950. Featuring unusual instrumentation and several notable musicians, the music consisted of innovative arrangements strongly inspired by classical music, and marked a major development in post-bebop jazz. As the title implies, these recordings are considered seminal in the history of cool jazz. The majority of the recordings on the record are under three minutes. The album has since been reissued many times. Blue Note recently released a version using the original tapes from Rudy Van Gelder, who produced the album.

Gil Evans contributed some charts to the sessions, acting as an advisor to a group of musicians who had met in his small New York apartment above a Chinese laundry. Evans had gained a reputation in the jazz world for his orchestration of bebop tunes for the Claude Thornhill orchestra, including Davis's "Donna Lee". Davis was seeking an alternative to the small groups typical of contemporary jazz (he was a member of Charlie Parker's quintet at the time), and in 1947 started to organize the loose circle of musicians into a working group. Rehearsals and experiments took place over the next year.