ABOUT MILES DAVIS and how this album
came to be...
Of all the young musicians who came out
of the immediate post-war jazz. period, Miles
Davis is perhaps the most lyrical and most
instantly communicating. In certain contexts,
he has proved to be an artist of enormous
appeal to people who know nothing about
jazz. This album, while deliberately “signifi-
cant” from the musical point of view, is also
an album which we feel is a delight to anyone
who simply wants to hear good music, beauti-
fully and richly performed.
Recognized today ag one of the giants of
the modern jazz era, Miles Davis first, came
to New York in 1945 to study at the Juilliard
School of Music. He had met Dizzy Gillespie
and Charlie Parker. when they had_passed
through St. Louis with the Billy Eckstine
band; these two took a personal as well as
musical interest in the 19-year-old trumpeter,
and helped him grow as a musician to the
point where Miles was soon working in
Parker's small combo on 52nd Street. Miles
has always had unusual and strong ideas of
his own, and the nine-piece band referred to
hy André Hodier made a profound impression
on his fellow musicians; it has been described
as the most important group in the develop-
ment of new tonal colors and in the freeing of
the jazz arranger. The present album repre-
sents, in a way, a summation of the develop-
ments inaugurated by that original Davis
band, while at the same time pointing still
more new directions in the treatment of the
jazz orchestra.
When Miles Davis signed with Columbia,
we found in each other a mutual interest in
furthering the ideals of the nine-piece band.
What direction this desire would take was
uncertain, beyond the conviction that Gil
Evans was the arranger we wanted. A series
of discussions with Gil followed, out of which
grew the basic conception (largely Miles’) of
this album; within the framework he wanted,
Gil developed the details which produce the
remarkable texture of a large jazz orchestra,
aa texture unique in tonal quality and breaking
away from the roots which are to be found
in the Davis group of the late forties. The
“Music for Brass” album (CL 941), in which
he appeared as a soloist, had created a deep
impression on Miles; without it, the budget
for the present album might have been much
smaller (but perhaps its sound might have
been less exeiting!).
Perhaps what makes for the best in jazz
(or any other kind of music) is a blending of
talents and a convietion concerning the end
toward which one strives. Whatever else is in
this album, it is something we all believed in
and saw through to a conclusion which time
‘will weigh—and weigh, we believe, in terms
‘of a keystone in orchestral jazz of the past
and of the future.
George Avakian
SLOWSVES DIED ERS TUR UtY OF SON St Ene SOuInS
Miles Davis has recorded with small groups
during the last few years (up to his recent ’Round
about Midnight, CL 949), one finds oneself oc-
casionally missing the extraordinary effort dating
from 1948 to 1950 and still associated with his
name that renewed the language of jazz bands.
The resulting works, which have become classics,
were due to the coming together of a group of
players and a group of arrangers. If Miles Davis’
wonderful solos have wort a place in everyone's
memory, people haven't forgotten the new light
shed by the writing of such scores as Boplicity
and Moon Dreams either. Why is it that the
author of these masterpieces, the composer-
arranger Gil Evans, has remained almost un-
known by the jazz publie—so much so, in fact,
that you often hear connoisseurs attribute the
paternity of these two arrangements to John
Lewis or Gerry Mulligan? John and Gerry have
their own claims to fame} I also know how much
esteem and respect these great arrangers have
for Gil Evans. Gerry Mulligan has said: “Not
many people really heard Gil; those who did,
those who came up through the Claude Thornhill
band, were tremendously affected, and they in
turn affected others.” (Cited by Nat Hentoff in
Down Beat, May 2, 1957.)
Eight years after Boplicity, seven after Moon
Dreams, what was going to emerge from the new
reunion of the two great masters of the “cool”
school, arranger Gil Evans and soloist Miles
Davis? Miles has not changed his opinion since
then. For him, Gil Evans “is the best. I haven’t
heard anything that knocks me out as consist-
ently as he does since I first heard Charlie Parker.”
(Quoted by Nat Hentoff in the same issue of
Down Beat,) And now that this album is here,
with its high points and its not so highs, its
extraordinary moments and its inevitable imper-
fections, once again it seems perfectly obvious
stint GL Bevis teas tated ervanes tov Miles
Davis. These two artists have a rare way of
biolinw this alice.
So let’s listen to the fruits of this much-
OD atta htis
‘This group differs from the old Miles Davis
band in two essential ways: first, here Miles (who
plays flugelhorn instead of his customary trum-
pet) is, co to speak, the only soloist, and second,
the band is a big one, made up of Bernie Glow,
Ernie Royal, Louis Mucei, Taft Jordan, and John
Carisi (trumpets); Frank Rehak, Jimmy Cleve-
land, and Joe Bennett (trombones); Tom Mitchell
(bass trombone); Willie Ruff and ‘Tony Miranda
(horns, with Jimmy Buffington replacing Mi-
randa on one session); Bill Barber (tuba); Lee
Konitz (alto sax); Danny Bank (bass clarinet);
Romeo Penque and Sid Cooper (flute and clari-
net, with Edwin Caine replacing Cooper on one
session); Paul Chambers (bass); Art Taylor
(drums). Finally, by an interesting innovation,
Gil Evans has combined the ten pieces that make
up the album in a kind of Suite, each following
the preceding one without interruption.
Foy the et hae Soe Dae eet ee
faced here with a kind of big-band writing that is
logical and makes use of the many possibilities of
such a group. For that matter, whether inten-
tionally or not, Gil Evans has taken as his point
of departure what Ellington was doing in the
early 1940's. A number of passages represent real
homages to Duke's art. As examples I have only
to cite the winning theme of the Dave Brubeck
composition The Duke, which has a melody and
a kind of orchestration that might have come
from the pen of Ellington in his best days; or the
variety of timbres and rhythms in the background
of The Maids of Cadiz; or the final ensemble of
I Don’t Wanna Be Kissed, which has a thoroughly
Ellingtonian verve. Of course, there is no plagi
arism here, but a filiation which, when all is said
and done, honors Miles and Gil, for ereators often
defirse thameneiven tay the choles of thelr sources.
I don’t have room enough to point out all the
beauties that I have discovered while listening
over and over to the orchestration of these ten
little concertos assembled in a vast fresco. Happy
finds in writing technique, such as those en-
sembles of Miles Ahead which recall the voicing
of Boplicity, and those brass solos in which a
greater mobility and a more apparent concern for
accentuation are manifested (this concern is
found again in Kurt Weill’s My Ship, where the
accents are admirably worked into the “group
phrasing”); such as that introductory motif of
The Maids of Cadiz, which is so delicately har-
monized such as those beautiful ensemble phrases
of Thr Thake-atdit; alternate Ahh aelh orienecal
use of the tuba, or those brilliant outbursts of
the brasses in Carisi's Springsville—all that is
ie ne oe eae cia
Happy finds in matters of form, too, such as
that riff in Ahmed Jamal's New Rhumba, which
has always the same structure but a constantly
varied instrumental presentation; such as Blues
for Pablo (which Gil Evans had given us recently
in a version for small band), in which a latent
conflict gradually takes shape between the
Spanish-type theme in minor and the blues theme
in major, with the latter putting in a brief four-
bar appearance before predominating throughout
three choruses. (It will be noticed that Evans
breaks away here at a few points from the four-
bar unit of construction and thus destroys the
symmetrical form of the traditional blues, which
a smennblidiad Weak dares Satur axtamiate dime dae
Blles Daye, ih ths album, contirens wagt ‘we
already knew about him—that he is the most
lyrical of modern jazzmen. But whereas the
iyricism of 2 Charlie Parker, in his great moments,
seemed to want to burst open the gates of
delirium, Miles’ lyricism tends rather toward a
discovery of ecstasy. This is particularly per-
ceptible in slow tempos. The most: beautiful solos
of this album are found, I think, in the ballads
(even though Miles plays with his unique “de-
tachment” in the medium tempo of Miles Ahead
and gives us, in New Rhumba, a highly successful
“stop chorus”). In slow tempos, Evans’ lyricism
is even more closely tied up with Davis’. The
exposition of My Ship is proof of this. The dis-
creet flight of the theme played by the band
prepares the way for Davis’ type of ecstasy; the
almost motionless background prolongs it. ‘The
effect is still more striking in The Meaning of the
Blues and J. J. Johnson's Lamerit, Here Miles
uses the seductiveness of his allusive style and it
is the band that tells us, in its infrequent inter-
ventions, whalt the sololet-lebs ua tuly Biles of.
Laat Of aR, RESS.Cne perechion GF Shoes written-
out passages in which Miles’ horn is called on to
lead an ensemble. “Gil,” says Mulligan, “tis the
one arranger I've ever played who can really
notate a Uline the way the eclolet Would blow it”
This first experiment of Miles Davis with a big
band has been looked forward to and is, we be-
lieve, conclusive. Representing also as it does
Gil Evans’ brilliant reappearance, it is a happy
event for the history of jazz, and one for which
unreserved congratulations are due the men
Sadie 3 Geers Avakian and Cel Lames.
André Hodier
‘Translated by David Noakes)
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