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Don Cheadle's "Miles Ahead"
by Solomon J. LeFlore
Miles Ahead, in which the Academy Award winning actor portrays the legendary trumpeter, marks the directorial debut of Don Cheadle, who co-wrote the script.The independently financed production was shot in Cincinnati. Co-starring with Don Cheadle are Ewan McGregor, Michael Stuhlbarg and Emayatzy Corinealdi. The production capped a nine year journey to the big screen that started with Davis' posthumous induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.Rather than encapsulating the entirety of Miles Davis' life, ...
Continue ReadingMiles Davis: Miles Davis at Newport 1955-1975: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4
by Maurizio Comandini
Il criterio utilizzato dai produttori della Sony Legacy, per questo quarto box della eccellente 'The Bootleg Series,' è piuttosto interessante e singolare: il legame che lega assieme varie performance di Miles Davis con i suoi vari gruppi, non è quello temporale come succede di solito, ma bensì quello spaziale, per di più preso in senso molto lato. Infatti il collante per i brani contenuti in questo cofanetto di quattro CD è il Festival di Newport, inteso in senso letterale ma ...
Continue ReadingMiles Davis at Newport 1955-1975: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4
by Doug Collette
There's a theory a nascent jazzlover could build an estimable collection of the music simply by picking and choosing from the discography of Miles Davis and the various musicians with whom he's collaborated over the years. Likewise, the mercurial alterations of style enacted by the man with the horn reflect the evolution of the music itself, never so vividly captured as this edition of The Bootleg Series. On Vol. 4 At Newport 1955-1975, the ascension of Davis as ...
Continue ReadingListen To This: Miles Davis And Bitches Brew
by Ian Patterson
Listen To This: Miles Davis and Bitches Brew Victor Svorinich 202 Pages ISBN: 978-1-62846-194-7 The University Press of Mississippi 2015 Surprisingly, Victor Svorinich's book is the first dedicated exclusively to a study of Miles Davis's ground-breaking album Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970). Surprising, because just about every facet of the iconic trumpeter's career has already been exhaustively documented. Svorinich, a music faculty member of Kean University in Union, New Jersey, previously put the microscope ...
Continue ReadingJazz and Theatre: A Review of “Miles & Coltrane: Blue”
by K. Shackelford
When trying to understand the rise and phenomenon of jazz music in the 1950's and 1960's, understanding the life of the jazz musician is equally important. Many of their stories illuminated heroic musical genius birthed out of pain, hope, and a charged political ethos. The play Miles & Coltrane: Blue delivered a snapshot of this experience through the lens of jazz icons Miles Davis and John Coltrane. It was recently performed at The International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, North ...
Continue Reading1959: The Most Creative Year in Jazz
by Nathan Holaway
1959 was arguably the most creative year in all of jazz history. Bird had already passed away, and this year would see the passings of Lester Young and Billie Holiday. Musically speaking, when we read jazz history texts or see the labels among the many diverse styles of jazz (i.e “Free Jazz," “Modal Jazz," “Third Stream," etc...), we tend to separate these different styles into alternate universes. In fact, many of the contributions we now consider to be jazz “classics" ...
Continue ReadingMiles Davis
by AAJ Staff
Trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991) is perhaps the most influential figure in the history of jazz. He regularly reinvented his sound, changing styles abruptly and pulling the rest of the jazz community along with him. Davis moved from East St. Louis to New York City in 1944, ostensibly to attend Juilliard. But he soon lost interest in school and spent his time gigging with local musicians. In 1945, at the age of nineteen, he joined Charlie Parker's quintet, where ...
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