Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 32

Record label: CBS

Produced: Teo Macero and Irving Townsend

Recorded: 30th St Studio, NYC; November 20, 1959–March 10, 1960

Released: 1960

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Miles Davis (t, flugelhorn); Gil Evans (ar); Ernie Royal, Bernie Glow, Louis Mucci, Taft Jordan (t); Dick Hixon, Frank Rehak (t); Jimmy Buffington, John Barrows, Earl Chapin (French horn); Jimmy McAllister, Bill Barber (tuba); Al Block, Eddie Caine (flute); Romeo Penque (oboe); Harold Feldman (clarinet, oboe); Danny Bank (bass clarinet); Jack Knitzer (bassoon); Janet Putman (harp); Paul Chambers (bs); Jimmy Cobb (d); Elvin Jones (pc)

Track listing: Concierto De Aranjuez (Adagio); Will O’ The Wisp; The Pan Piper; Saeta; Solea

Running time: 41:33

Current CD: Sony Legacy CK 65142 adds: Song Of Our Country; Concierto De Aranjuez (Part One); Concierto De Aranjuez (Part Two ending)

Further listening: Miles Ahead (1957); Porgy And Bess (1958)

Further reading: Miles The Autobiography (Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe, 1989); Miles Davis (Ian Carr, 1982); www.milesdavis.com

Download: iTunes

The Miles Davis/Gil Evans collaborations of the late ’50s were era-defining statements of orchestral jazz that continue to inspire composers and arrangers of all persuasions.

Miles: ‘I loved working with Gil because he was so meticulous and creative, and I trusted his musical arrangements completely.’

The Evans style – lugubrious, luminous brass, woodwind colours and modern shifting-sands harmony – was the ideal backdrop for the doleful splendour of Miles’s horn and the music they made together spoke to an audience beyond jazz listeners. Indeed, some jazz lovers were openly sceptical about the balance between arrangement and spontaneity, though the reputation these days of the three albums they made between 1957 and 1960 is that of unassailable classics. It would have been a remarkable period for Davis with his sextet achievements alone (1958’s Milestones and 1959’s Kind Of Blue), but the artistic success of the Birth Of The Cool (1949/50) and the first full Evans collaboration Miles Ahead (1957) added to the commercial viability of their Porgy And Bess (1958), and assured Miles that ‘Gil and I were something special together musically.’

When a friend played Miles Joaquin Rodrigo’s guitar concerto, he excitedly shared it with Evans who ran with the Spanish idea, researching flamenco and the life of the Spanish gypsy, adapting Will O’ The Wisp from Manuel de Falla’s 1915 ballet El Amor Brujo and deriving Saeta from a religious Spanish march. Concept in place, the music proved elusive and difficult to play (Miles eventually instructed the ensembles to relax, creating a powerful raggedness). With awkward instrumental balances to record (several expensive sessions resulted in nothing being salvaged), it took 15 three-hour sessions and much editing to complete. The resulting record, however, is perhaps the richest work that Davis and Evans had yet created; hypnotic percussive ostinati, drifting/hanging harmonic backdrops and Miles’s floating, haunted meditations, often on a single Spanish scale – music of ceremonial majesty.

There are resisters (‘For the listener in search of jazz, there is mighty little of that commodity evident,’ observed the New York Times, ‘Inflated light music’ maintains the respected Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD) but for generations of impartial listeners to come, Sketches Of Spain will continue to weave its spell.