Gerry Mulligan & Ben Webster - Chelsea Bridge

Gerald Joseph “Gerry“ Mulligan (April 6, 1927 – January 20, 1996) was 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 cool jazz groups. Mulligan was also a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments. “There are some words that have been kind of lost from modern usage that I would like to bring to my music and have striven all my life to do, BEAUTY, GRACE, NOBILITY, these are the things that music can bring to us, as human beings. I think it is well that we who make music keep that in our consciousness.“ -GERRY MULLIGAN