Jazz Articles about Miles Davis

About Miles Davis

Book Review

Miles Davis: The Collected Artwork

by Nenad Georgievski
May 23, 2014

Miles Davis: The Collected Artwork Scott Gutterman 204 ISBN: 978-1608872237 Insight Editions 2013 Few are the musicians in any era that accurately inhabit the word “superstar" in the sense that artist Andy Warhol used it. He defined a “superstar" as a person of style, influence and panache, a figure of endless charisma and on whom one's attention falls and rarely wanders. It could be said with certainty that trumpeter Miles Davis ...

Extended Analysis

Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3

by Ian Patterson
May 21, 2014

It would have been inconceivable for Miles Davis in his post-sabbatical, 1980s reincarnation to have been billed as “an extra added attraction" on any festival or concert hall billing, but that's how it was when the trumpeter--already a legend--played his first ever gigs at the Filmore East, supporting Neil Young & Crazy Horse and the Steve Miller Band in March 1970. The initiative to stage Davis at the hallowed rock venue came from CBS President Clive Davis, no doubt with ...

Extended Analysis

Miles Davis: Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3

by Doug Collette
May 19, 2014

Intensely intoxicating as much as it is wholly hypnotic, Miles Davis Live at the Fillmore becomes increasingly so through the course of its four compact discs. More than doubling the playing time of the original four-sided vinyl release, The Bootleg Series Vol. 3 posits an argument the band(s) of this era were among the finest ever led by the man with the horn. If that sounds hyperbolic, it's difficult not to rhapsodize about this archive series in general ...

Extended Analysis

Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3

by Maurizio Comandini
April 22, 2014

Finalmente la Sony Legacy pubblica ufficialmente e integralmente i quattro concerti del gruppo di Miles Davis al Fillmore East, mitico teatro posto più o meno all'incrocio fra la Sesta Strada Est e la Seconda Avenue a New York, nell'East Village. Era la metà del mese di giugno del 1970, il capolavoro Bitches Brew era stato pubblicato da pochi mesi e il gruppo era in forma straordinaria, a cominciare dal leader. In realtà, questi concerti erano stati immediatamente ...

Album Review

Miles Davis: We Want Miles (Bonus Track Version)

Read "We Want Miles (Bonus Track Version)" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
March 26, 2014

The audaciously titled We Want Miles has one of the more interesting histories in the catalog of trumpeter Miles Davis. Originally released by Columbia Records in 1982, it was not made widely available outside of Japan where it was recorded live in 1981. For those who managed to find it, it was both celebrated and vilified. This new reissue (with additional material) illuminates that debate. We Want Miles was the first live recording of Davis' return to music following a ...

Extended Analysis

Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3

by John Kelman
March 21, 2014

By the time Bitches Brew (Columbia) was released in April, 1970—and despite receiving a 5-star review in Downbeat Magazine—trumpeter Miles Davis was already under fire from mainstream jazz critics as having “sold out," despite the densely constructed, improvisationally unfettered music being as unapproachable to an audience looking for accessible music as anything he'd done with his increasingly liberated second great quintet of the 1960s. Sure, there were rock rhythms and, perhaps more disturbingly to the delicate ears of its detractors, ...

Profile

Miles Davis’ Birth of The Cool: Origins of the Cool Jazz Movement

by Jeff Winke
December 14, 2013

Hands down the best name for a jazz album is Birth of the Cool. It doesn't make it to The 100 Greatest Jazz Albums of All Time nor is it among the Village Voice's Ten Jazz Albums to Hear Before You Die, yet the Miles Davis album, Birth of The Cool, was a pivot point in American jazz. The album became an orchestrated departure from bebop, with the word orchestrated meaning both the use of orchestration and a ...