Gerry Mulligan
Gerry Mulligan
Gerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulliganwas an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history – playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz – he was also a notable arranger, working with Claude Thornhill, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, and others. Mulligan's pianoless quartet of the early 1950s with trumpeter Chet Baker is still regarded as one of the more important...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSaxophonist
Date of Birth6 April 1927
CountryUnited States of America
If you've only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.
A very talented player and all around excellent musician. I love hearing his records on radio!
When we've finished the current tour I'm going to go back to Italy and see if I can do some more writing.
Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra
The recording industry has changed; they're enjoying such incredible success in the pop field
When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins
You start way down on a low B flat on the tuba and you have a chromatic scale; you can match the colours all the way up, till you get to the top of the trumpet.
Actually, when I was very young, first starting to play, I think I probably listened more to clarinet players than to saxophones.
Actually, it is a fact that I've been doing more writing than playing in recent years.
I'm fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.
Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones
The Russian composers, especially, tricked the symphony orchestra into the kind of dynamic, rhythmic thing
When [Billy] Strayhorn came on the scene, he just blew us away.
In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it's the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what's available, what somebody happens to play for you.