The Cookers
‘Look Out!’
Gearbox Records
At Birdland Through March 2

The template that the Preservation Hall Jazz Band established in 1961 is valid even today. Allan Jaffe and Larry Borenstein generally get the most credit for transforming an art gallery on St. Peter’s Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans into a performance space.  They also had the idea of forming a band of veteran Crescent City musicians, none of whom were big enough names to be headliners, into a collective group whose name would be more of a draw as any of the individual players and thus represent an entire genre of music.

About 10 years later, the impresario Al Vollmer revisited essentially that same basic idea with experienced swing and big band players based in upper Manhattan. He christened that group the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band.  Both bands are active to this day.

More recently, there have been modernist collectives that employ fundamentally the same notion. Like the Preservation Hall players at the moment when that band was formed, The Cookers are essentially older musicians; the players were already in their 60s and 70s when they made their first album in 2010. 

The group is generally led by a younger trumpeter and composer, David Weiss, who fills the role of Allan Jaffe and Al “Doc” Vollmer but is a considerably more gifted musician than either of them. He calls most of the shots musically, and does all the talking on stage. 

The Cookers reflect a very specific moment in jazz history: trumpeter Eddie Henderson and drummer Billy Hart (both born in 1940), along with pianist George Cables and their usual tenor saxophonist Billy Harper (both born 1943), all came of age musically at the height of what is sometimes called the “Hard Bop” movement; as with “dixieland” and “cool jazz,” though, a lot of players in the genre aren’t crazy about that name. 

Bassist Cecil McBee, born in 1935, has been around long enough to have personally experienced the earliest days of modern jazz as well as everything that came after. The other members of the group, alto saxophonist Donald Harrison and, this week at Birdland, tenor saxophonist Craig Handy, are, like Mr. Weiss, children of the early 1960s. 

About 60 years ago, when most of the future Cookers were already professional musicians, the two most “advanced” genres of jazz, bebop and free jazz, began to slowly come together after coexisting for half a generation or so. At this moment, some of the established stars — most famously Miles Davis, and, around the same time, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, in his collaboration with saxophonist Joe Henderson — began playing more and more in the “modal” style, which was then regarded as a kind of a bridge between bop and free jazz. At the same time, provocative players like Eric Dolphy, Wayne Shorter, and Andrew Hill were thinking of other ways to cross the gap.

The Cookers play mostly their own music, which is to say, original tunes by the individual members, written expressly for this seven-piece collective. At their opening set on Tuesday, they started with a catchy piece by Mr. Cables titled “The Mystery of Monifa Brown,” with solos by both saxists. This piece, which also launches their recent album — the group’s sixth, called “Look Out!” — is apparently, though not mentioned by Mr. Weiss, a dedication to the WBGO Saturday evening jazz host.

The second tune, “Peacemaker,” was composed by Mr. McBee for the septet’s second album, “Cast the First Stone” (2010). It’s an intriguing tune that actually seemed to be more than one piece of music being played by more than one ensemble.  

It started with Eddie Henderson soloing at length with just the three rhythms, not only soaring straight ahead but offering wry commentary with some very vocalized sounds.  For much of this portion, it seemed like a duo; Messrs. Cables and McBee were making valuable contributions, but the real focus was on Messrs. Henderson and Hart.

The septet had essentially become a quartet and then a duet. Then, after a fanfare by the full ensemble, Mr. Harrison took the spotlight; it was the same tune and the same rhythm section, but he was doing something entirely different with it, again, alternating between soaring and probing, but with a more extroverted approach overall.

Then, another surprise: The horns stopped playing and the composer, Mr. McBee, started to solo. Messrs. Cables and Hart continued to play, but once again it seemed like they had turned the corner into yet another completely different piece.  

Playing behind the horns, Mr. Hart was feisty and aggressive, like he was determined to keep them, and the audience, on the very edge of their collective toes. Yet playing behind Mr. McBee, he was gentler and more forgiving, all of a sudden, modulating his playing to the point where it was soft enough that everyone could hear Mr. McBee’s bass solo. Not that he was holding back: Even at 88, Mr. McBee is a strong and forceful enough player to not have to worry about being heard.

The evening consisted of a mere four tunes, but they were all like that, with each individual solo improvisation seeming to be a whole new song. They followed “Peacemaker” with Mr. Weiss’s “Free Fall.” On a blindfold test, I would have guessed it was a mid-’60s work by Wayne Shorter.  

The final piece, a work by the late Freddie Hubbard titled “Four,” was announced as a feature for Mr. Hart; at first mention, this seemed kind of redundant, in that the drummer’s powerful playing was much in evidence all evening long. The piece lived up to the description, though; Billy Hart’s playing here was even more energetic and dynamic than it had been up to that point.

These two latter pieces do not seem to have been recorded yet by the septet; here’s hoping that they’re working on a seventh album. They could do worse than to record it live at Birdland. Even though the 44th Street jazz shrine also boasts an excellent menu and kitchen, the real Cookers are up on the bandstand.