Johnny Carisi (1922-1992)

Biography

John E. “Johnny” Carisi was born in New York and played trumpet with various bands before focusing on composing and arranging. He contributed important arrangements to the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool sessions, including “Israel,” one of the nonet’s most performed pieces. Carisi studied composition formally and sought to incorporate classical techniques into jazz. He arranged for various artists while working in music publishing and later scored films and television. Carisi never achieved wide fame but earned respect from fellow musicians for his sophisticated compositions and arrangements. His contributions to cool jazz and third stream music were significant.

Musical Style

Carisi’s arranging style was harmonically adventurous, incorporating classical modernist techniques into jazz contexts. His arrangements featured complex harmonic progressions, contrapuntal writing, and through-composed forms. Carisi was influenced by Stravinsky, Bartók, and other 20th-century composers, bringing their techniques to jazz orchestration. His style emphasized composition over improvisation, creating detailed arrangements that left specific spaces for solos. Carisi’s voicings were often unusual, using instruments in unexpected combinations and registers. His work represented the intellectual, composition-focused side of modern jazz, demonstrating that jazz could incorporate serious compositional techniques without losing its essential character. Carisi’s arrangements were challenging and uncompromising, more interested in artistic expression than commercial appeal.

Orchestration Techniques

Carisi’s orchestration technique applies classical modernist compositional procedures to jazz ensemble writing, creating arrangements that emphasize harmonic complexity and through-composed formal structures over conventional improvisational frameworks. His characteristic voicing approach employs quartal and quintal harmonies built on stacked fourths and fifths rather than traditional tertian structures, creating open, ambiguous sonorities that avoid the warmth of conventional jazz voicings in favor of angular, modernist color. Carisi’s sectional writing features mixed instrumental groupings that dissolve traditional brass-versus-reeds distinctions, pairing trumpet with bass clarinet or trombone with alto saxophone to create unconventional timbral combinations derived from chamber music practice. His contrapuntal technique employs sophisticated devices including invertible counterpoint, augmentation, and retrograde melodic construction, with each voice maintaining motivic independence while contributing to the overall harmonic structure. The rhythmic architecture incorporates irregular phrase lengths and asymmetrical meters that disrupt conventional jazz periodicity, creating formal structures that derive from classical development procedures rather than repeated chorus forms. Carisi’s use of instrumental registers deliberately exploits unconventional combinations, placing instruments in ranges that create dissonant interval classes—minor ninths, major sevenths—between adjacent voices to produce tension as primary textural element. His dynamic scheme follows classical formal principles with development sections featuring increased textural density and recapitulations employing reduced orchestration, creating narrative arc through compositional means rather than improvisational intensity. Brass voicings in Carisi’s scores often employ close-position clusters that create semitone friction between adjacent voices, producing harsh sonorities that emphasize dissonance as structural element rather than ornament. He employs harmonic planing techniques derived from Debussy and Ravel, moving entire chord structures in parallel motion through chromatic or whole-tone pathways that create harmonic ambiguity. Carisi’s woodwind writing features the nonet’s unusual instrumentation—French horn, tuba, alto saxophone—to create colors unavailable in conventional big band scoring, with each instrument contributing unique timbral properties to mixed sonorities. His use of pedal tones creates harmonic tension through sustained notes in lower registers while upper voices move through unrelated harmonic areas, producing polytonality through vertical spacing. Carisi’s signature technique involves creating through-composed arrangements where improvisation spaces are carefully integrated into the compositional structure rather than appearing as separate solo sections, treating spontaneous creation as compositional element within the larger formal architecture, demonstrating his commitment to jazz as serious compositional art form rather than mere improvisational vehicle.

Top Albums

Miles Davis - “Birth of the Cool” (1949-1950, “Israel” arrangement)

Carisi’s composition and arrangement “Israel” stands as one of the Birth of the Cool sessions’ most complex pieces. The arrangement features sophisticated harmonies, unusual melodic lines, and clever orchestration. What makes “Israel” remarkable is its compositional ambition—Carisi wasn’t content with simple head-solos-head form but created a through-composed piece with continuous development. The arrangement influenced cool jazz and third stream music, demonstrating that jazz could sustain compositional complexity while maintaining improvisational elements.

Johnny Carisi - “Johnny Carisi and His Jazztet” (1990s recordings)

Late recordings of Carisi’s arrangements reveal his continued evolution. His charts demonstrate sophisticated compositional thinking with complex harmonies and forms. What’s particularly interesting is hearing Carisi’s arrangements performed with modern recording technology and musicians familiar with his aesthetic. The recordings show that Carisi’s approach remained contemporary despite being developed in the 1940s-1950s—his compositional rigor transcended stylistic fashions.

Various Artists - “New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm” (Carisi arrangements)

Carisi’s arrangements for various projects demonstrate his range. His work spans straightforward jazz to experimental pieces incorporating classical techniques. What makes Carisi’s arranging special is his uncompromising artistic vision—he wrote what he believed in regardless of commercial considerations. His arrangements challenged both musicians and listeners, demonstrating that jazz could be intellectually demanding without being cold or academic.