Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club Features Legendary Jazz Supergroup THE COOKERS on Friday and Saturday November 25 & 26 at 7:30 P.M. The BOSTON GLOBE raves, “Player for player, there’s no better working band in jazz than The Cookers.”
Experience counts, especially in jazz. You can hear the fruits of such work in the expressive language THE COOKERS bring to the bandstand and to their six critically acclaimed recordings. This legendary and exciting all-star septet summons up an aggressive mid ’60s spirit with a potent collection of expansive post-bop originals marked by all the requisite killer instincts and pyrotechnic playing expected of some of the heaviest hitters on the scene today.
“A dream team of forward-leaning hard-bop”
— NEW YORK TIMES
“(The Cookers) are some of the best composers, arrangers and musicians we have in jazz, and they’re working together in one of the most exciting super-groups we’ve seen in a long, long time. The arrangements, handled by Harper and Weiss, are outrageously wonderful. And the musicians just kill it on every tune.”
— DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE
“These legends play a vivacious strain of muscular acoustic jazz that establishes a historical through-line to the innovations of past masters, keeping the faith with passion and grace.”
— ALL ABOUT JAZZ
“If you wondered what has happened to all the passion and intensity, once such essential ingredients of great swinging jazz and now virtually non-existent in so much of today’s outpourings, you’ll find it all in The Cookers.”
— JAZZWISE
BILLY HARPER (Tenor Saxophone), CECIL MCBEE (Bass), GEORGE CABLES (Piano), EDDIE HENDERSON (Trumpet), and BILLY HART (Drums) all came up in the heady era of the mid ’60s. It was a period that found the dimensions of hard bop morphing from their original designs, and each of these guys helped facilitate the process as members of some of the most important bands of the era. DAVID WEISS (Trumpet) and DONALD HARRISON (Alto Sax), the youngest members of this talented band, are from a more recent generation.
Billy Hart and Eddie Henderson were members of Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking Mwandishi group; Cecil McBee anchored Charles Lloyd’s great ’60s quartet alongside Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette; Billy Harper was part of Lee Morgan’s last group, as well as being a member of Max Roach’s Quartet and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers; while George Cables held down the piano chair in numerous bands including groups led by Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Dexter Gordon and Art Pepper.
David Weiss and Donald Harrison are experts in this forthright lingo, having gained experience performing with Art Blakey, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, Charles Tolliver, Roy Haynes and Herbie Hancock.
THE COOKERS, who “embody the serious-as-death commitment that it took to thrive on the New York scene some four decades ago” (The Boston Globe), released their sixth acclaimed album, Look Out! in 2021. On Look Out! the incredibly high level of musicianship has only increased with fresh, challenging, boundary-pushing music from these revered veteran improvisers.
Each member of THE COOKERS has also spent time leading his own series of groups, and each has a keenly individual sound. But it’s the unmistakable power of teamwork that makes this music so commanding and resonates with a kind of depth and beauty that speaks of the seasoned track record of its principals (combined, the group has over 250 years of experience in the jazz world and has been a part of over 1,000 recordings). You can feel the collective weight of that experience in their music, and especially in their live performances.
