Baker, Chet
Shine
Chet Baker was a top-notch jazz musician, the creator of a uniqueand personal poetics, an interpreter who did not wallow in his own torments but who also knew how to take less introspective paths, including a superfine and very lively swing. Chet Baker's music had characteristics of its own. Of a bebop nature in the fast pieces, he had in solos that complex and pulsating way that characterized this style. He differed from it in the soft timbre of the trumpet, which rarely indulged in the "flare-ups" typical of the boppers, and above all for the insistent use of pauses. These were precisely one of the cornerstones of his musical language. His performances took place in a continuous interplay of sound and silence elements that were of equal importance to him of inhalations and exhalations.