The Cookers Quintet are a Toronto-based jazz combo, with a sound firmly rooted in the '50s and '60s hard bop movement. Inspired by the 1965 Blue Note recording "Night Of The Cookers" featuring Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan, the group cut their teeth on standards at a weekly residency where they developed the inspiration and chemistry to write tunes of their own.Rising to the challenge of updating and performing music with the classic sound of jazz's golden era, TCQ bring a throwback feel without playing it safe. Their versatile frontline is made up of Ryan Oliver (tenor sax) and Tim Hamel (trumpet) whose combined tonal talents can a bring hot, uptempo number to a boil or carry a ballad with sophistication and subtlety. The glue of the group is Toronto veteran Richard Whiteman (piano), whose lyrical playing gives the rock solid swing of Alex Coleman (bass) and Joel Haynes (drums) the rhythmic freedom to drive the group's compositions to the next level.
It speaks volumes that this music sits so comfortably in the capable hands of guest performers from various traditions and generations; a veteran like Johnny O'Neal who has cut records with Art Blakey is as comfortably housed in these rhythms and melodies as someone like Leron Thomas, whose modern associations fall more in the vein of the RnB-indebted jazz of Jason Moran and Robert Glasper. With the ability to adapt to new styles on tracks like "The Thrill Is Gone" featuring Do Right's own soul jazz dynamo Dawn Pemberton, but without the need to bow to current trends, The Cookers Quintet has created an original sound that authentically expresses their influences while remaining unique and contemporary. These tunes are creating a new place for jazz to live in the modern ear, not as a music that needs to keep up with the times, but as a music that is as alive and vibrant as ever.