Miles Davis Online

Thanks!

Of course we’re interested in who will be the 16th recipient of the Miles Davis Award, created for the festival’s 15th anniversary in 1994 to honor a great international jazz musician for the entire body of his or her work and for that musician’s influence in regenerating the jazz idiom.

The wonderful McCoy Tyner was last year’s recipient. He follows a prestigious list of those given the award: Mike Stern (2007), Brad Mehldau (2006), Dave Holland (2005), Keith Jarrett (2004), Joe Zawinul (2003), Chick Corea (2002), Michael Brecker (2001), Charlie Haden (2000), Cassandra Wilson (1999), John Scofield (1998), Herbie Hancock (1997), Wayne Shorter (1996), Pat Metheny (1995) and John McLaughlin (1994).

Looking at the program, I know it’s going to be a grand time. Definitely peruse the festival History, a very interesting look back at the amazing acts who performed. The gallery of festival posters from each of the past 30 years is a treat. The 1991 edition is a favorite, but for a Miles Davis fan 1988 is the best.

A drawing by Miles Davis became the visual theme for the ninth edition, a self-portrait that was published by the Festival and of which 150 signed serigraphs were made available to the public. If Miles’ electrifying performance at Place des Arts will be remembered forever by all who attended the legendary trumpeter’s concert, it was Pat Metheny who got the final word on the 1988 event, pronouncing it “the best jazz festival in the world.”

So here comes Wayne Brown and a fantastic post from his Wayne’s Guitar Blog titled:

Ten Miles Davis Tips for Guitarists

The article is inspired by the recent Kind of Blue at 50 panel at SXSW, which featured George Avakian, Vincent Wilburn, Jr., Erin Davis, David Fricke, moderator Ashley Kahn and Quincy Jones discussing the iconic album.

So what can guitarists learn from discussing Miles Davis and his famous recording? “A lot,” writes Wayne.

He adds: “The principals that guided Miles explain why he has been described as nanotechnology. The micro components of his music and ways can seem dissonant and counter-intuitive, but together they produce results that have fascinated music fans, musicians and scholars ever since.”

Don’t Dwell on the Past and Appreciate the Ballad are two of the ten, quite interesting, Miles Davis-inspired tips for guitar players.

Wayne also includes excellent quotes from the SXSW panel.

Guitarist or not this is a great post to check out for anyone who loves Miles Davis, or appreciates the craft of a musician. It also further illustrates the deep and far-reaching influence of Miles Davis on the creative process.

Creativity begets creativity.

The 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’ seminal recording, “Kind of Blue,” has provided us a tremendous, 50th-anniversary boxed set from Sony, commemorative events, special panels to converse over the album’s legacy and more ink spilled and Internet space devoted to retrospectives, analysis and appreciations about the best-selling jazz recording of all time to keep you busy reading for the remainder of the year.

The album and its amazing cast of musicians undoubtedly deserve all the attention – and then some. It’s truly one of those recordings that even non-jazz fans are aware of, and perhaps even own because the idea of having such a legendary recording in their collection is too good to pass up, they heard one of the songs somewhere, sometime and liked it enough to give it a try, or maybe it’s just fun to be part of a very (very) big group of people worldwide (and perhaps beyond!) who love “Kind of Blue.”

Between the lines of the well-deserved hullabaloo over “Kind of Blue” is the fact that many fans and critics don’t even think its Davis’ best album. Without doubt his most famous, but there are other equally essential albums in the Miles Davis catalog not to be overlooked by fans of old, or those just getting acquainted with the jazz legend.

The latest entry in the “Kind of Blue” Appreciation Society is John Edward Hasse, the curator of American Music at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who penned an interesting appreciation/perspective in this past weekend in the Wall Street Journal on Kind of Blue’s golden anniversary (Davis’s New Burst of Freedom).

Writes Hasse: “Davis once famously said, “Don’t play what you know, play what you don’t know.” His players’ improvisations here sound clean, fresh and original, as they nimbly respond to the challenge of unfamiliar pieces and the novel organizing principle of modes. The slower chord changes, the spareness of the themes, and the economy of his and Evans’s solos all conveyed a sense of space and possibility — and thus helped open a door to a new kind of musical modernity.”

© Copyright, Miles Davis - Credit: Columbia Records

So we applaud AskMen.com for adding Miles to the roster. In fact, AskMen.com has a Style Icon section reserved just for jazz musicians (Jazz Style Icons), which is pretty cool. Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Evans, and Chet Baker presently make up the very cool, first foursome to this stylish list.

Writes Christian Chensvold: “In 1965, the legendary jazz critic and Esquire style writer George Frazier dubbed Miles Davis “The Warlord of the Weejuns” in the liner notes of a greatest hits collection. A hell of a nickname, even if no one knew what it meant.

“Before he got all freaky and avant-garde, Miles spent the late ’40s to mid ’60s dressed in various iterations of conservative dapperness, from the Brooks Brothers suits he wore at the time of his 1949 recording Birth of the Cool, to the slim European suits he sported for 1963′s Seven Steps to Heaven.”

Chensvold even provides a few tips if you’re thinking of following Miles’ sartorial technique: “…you can be a kingpin of cool in slim flat-front trousers hemmed with no-break, white oxford-cloth button-down patterned sports coat, and Bass’ new Dover model Weejun.”

I’ve hit on this previously, but costume design is going to play a big part in the biopic – as well it should. From the Brooks Brothers suits to the funky threads, Miles Davis always set the trends. The person tasked with costume design is going to have some fun with Don Cheadle and the cast. Good times.

If you’ve ever wondered how Miles Davis created such a magnum opus, the answer just might be “radical simplicity,” according to Harvard Business School professor Robert D. Austin and Carl Størmer, founding principal of JazzCode, a consulting and entertainment firm specializing in improvisational collaboration and communication in high-performance teams.

“In their case, “Miles Davis: Kind of Blue”, they reflect on the beauty of the music as well as the unusual story behind its creation. And they suggest that nonmusicians—such as managers who aim to spark and sustain innovation for competitive advantage—can learn a lot of new notes from Davis’s example.”

In a Q&A well worth checking out (Kind of Blue: Pushing Boundaries with Miles Davis), Martha Lagace, senior editor of HBS Working Knowledge, explores this concept with Austin and Størmer, who provide an interesting look at the innovation, experimentation and working style Miles Davis utilized in putting together Kind of Blue.

When the Harvard Business School meets Miles Davis, get set for some rather cool intellectualizing.

• Good news for fans of the sweet wax. Four classic Miles Davis albums – Sketches Of Spain, In A Silent Way, Nefertiti, and Bitches Brew – have been newly reissued on 180 gram vinyl LPs, which should thrill even the most astute audiophiles. (St. Louis Jazz Notes)

• The Miles Davis Movie: Better as linear or nonlinear narrative or: Deconstructing the ‘deconstructed biopic’ (Link)

• Miles Davis: Music as Emotional Instability (troubled souls unite)

• Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (1969) (Video)

• Robert Irving III will present the world premiere of “Sketches of Brazil,” an orchestral homage to his mentors Miles Davis and Gil Evans, in August at Chicago’s Millennium Park. The piece commemorates the 50th anniversary of the recording of Sketches of Spain. Irving recorded and performed with Davis during the trumpeter’s comeback in the early 1980s. (St. Louis Jazz Notes)

• Have you picked up your Miles Davis skateboard yet?

Hot Lips Page, Tommy Potter, Agent, Big Chief Moore, Sidney Bechet, Al Haig, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham (Paris 1949)