After 50 years of playing jazz — individually and together — the members of the Cookers are used to attempts to categorize and define them.
Just don’t call them a “bebop supergroup” (as journalists are wont to do).
That’s too simple, too limiting, too dated, says David Weiss, one of the septet’s trumpeters and its youngest musician at 53.
“Hard-bop puts you in a box,” Weiss says. “No musician in this group ever thought this way. They’re all open-minded and want to push their music forward.
“Hard-bop has become a dismissive curse word to put you back in a box, put you back in the ’60s,” he adds. “You have to be described as something. It’s the terminology, but it’s not the words themselves. It’s what they’ve become. When we hear ‘hard-bop,’ we cringe.”
So no “hard-bop.” Got it.
Still, the group’s name and aesthetic are testament to a level of experience and a perspective on music and life on the road forged as jazz shifted from being “danceable” to a faster-paced, more improvised style in the mid-1960s.
Most of the septet’s original members — pianist George Cables, saxophonist Billy Harper, drummer Billy Hart, trumpeter Eddie Henderson and bassist Cecil McBee — started playing in the days of bop. Hart and Henderson were part of Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking “Mwandishi” group. McBee played with Cecil Lloyd’s ’60s quartet. For the Salt Lake City show Monday at 7:30 p.m. at Capitol Theatre, Donald Harrison (the other youngster in the group) will join on alto sax.
Each member has led his own group as well as recording individually. Then, in 2007, Weiss pulled a septet together for a concert in California as part of a tribute to two-trumpet, live records from the ’60s—the “Night of the Cookers.” The arrangement stuck.
“Everything clicked,” he says. “Everyone looked at each other and I said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”
In 10 years together, the Cookers have recorded five albums. iTunes named their 2014 release, “Time and Again,” the jazz album of the year.
“These guys all have known each other for a long time,” Weiss says. “They’ve played with each other for a long. There’s a very common language that they all speak.”
Weiss said the Salt Lake audience can expect to hear sets from each of those albums, including original compositions and some of Harper, Hart and McBee’s earlier recordings.
“All we can do is play music as fresh and exciting as possible with a certain amount of conviction and passion and ability,” he says. “Can we make people’s day better? That’s all we try to do.”
Recipe for success<br>The Cookers will perform on the JazzSLC series.<br>When • Monday, Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m.<br>Where • Capitol Theatre, 50 W. 200 South, Salt Lake City<br>Tickets • $28.50; $10 with student ID