This collection of material, recorded in 1949 and 1950, comes shortly after after Miles Davis had emerged from under Charlie Parker’s wing. He can be heard on a lot of classic Parker tracks from 1947-48; the common point of view is that he hadn’t developed enough as a player yet to hold his own in that context — the truth is, his style and the saxophonist’s were simply incompatible. Recorded with a nonet, the Birth Of The Cool music, as its title indicates, is often credited with kickstarting a whole style: “cool jazz,” built for head-nodding and finger-snapping instead of stomping and cheering, better experienced in your living room rather than a smoky club. (Davis notably hated the whole “cool jazz” movement, because its practitioners — many of them white — made more money from the style than he had; the nonet recordings were a flop at the time.)

The group, whose membership fluctuated over the course of three recording sessions, included trumpet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, trombone, French horn, tuba, piano, bass, and drums. Some seriously notable players including Lee Konitz (alto) and Gerry Mulligan (baritone), Kai Winding and J.J. Johnson (trombone) and Max Roach and Kenny Clarke (drums) took part, and the arrangements were mostly handled by Gil Evans, with whom Davis would work again and again all the way up to the 1980s. The horns are massed together, playing harmonies designed to sound like vocalists, and paired up according to timbre (trumpet and alto sax taking the lead, baritone sax and tuba offering a counterpoint, and trombone and French horn filling in the harmonies). While there’s an orchestral feel to the music overall, the compositions still stick to jazz structure, with group members taking individual solos in turn.

These tracks are all short (under three minutes), because they were originally released on 78s. As a result, the album flies by — a smooth and, yes, very cool way to spend just under 40 minutes.