Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Smiles on Miles at Centennial Celebration

‘Sketches of Miles: Miles Davis at 100’Jazz at Lincoln Center OrchestraMiles Davis was not only the most popular jazz musician of the second half of the 20th century but also quite probably the most innovative and consistently creative. Even those listeners who didn’t approve of every musical path that he traveled couldn’t argue with that. It’s a foregone conclusion that Jazz at Lincoln Center would want to celebrate the centennial of his birth.The question is, however, which of the many Miles Davises to focus on? The bebop prodigy of the 1940s or the pioneer who gave birth to the cool? The leader of the most innovative quintet of the late 1950s, who then managed to top that with an even more well-regarded ensemble in the mid-1960s? There’s also the restless experimenter who pioneered modal improvisation and then pushed forward into ways to electrify the music and introduce elements of rock and funk, somehow making jazz both more commercial and more avant-garde at the same time. Along the way, he became the only musician to collaborate with Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Quincy Jones, and Prince.Since the flagship of JALC is the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, it was a logical choice that the organization would choose to celebrate Davis’s accomplishments in the field of large format jazz ensembles. This chiefly means his unique collaboration with the brilliant composer, arranger, and outside-of-the-box visionary thinker Gil Evans. Their three principle works as a team, “Miles Ahead” (1957), “Porgy and Bess” (1959), and “Sketches of Spain” (1960) completely reinvented the jazz orchestra, and provided a whole new set of possibilities for the very notion of big band jazz.Throughout his career, Davis cultivated his image as the bad boy of jazz, aloof and brooding, perhaps the first anti-social artist in popular music, the virtual opposite of Louis Armstrong — admittedly one of Davis’s idols — who lived to please crowds. In 1966, Davis even released an album titled “Miles Smiles,” as if to signify that looking happy was not a customary element of his “brand” as we would say today.That notion is more stagecraft than anything else, because Miles smiles all over his music. In fact, the 1957 “Miles Ahead” unleashes a veritable tsunami of happiness on the part of average listeners, hardcore jazz fans, and many subsequent generations of musicians, even more so than the classic works on the 1966 album. “Miles Ahead” is pure joy from start to finish, putting it in a class with other works of the period, like Sinatra’s “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers,” Nat King Cole’s “After Midnight,” and “Ella and Louis” — Fitzgerald and Armstrong, that is.The first half of JALC’s “Sketches of Miles: Miles Davis at 100” consisted of eight of the ten tracks on “Miles Ahead” played by about five different trumpeters. The 1957 LP is so iconic that it almost forms a checklist of everything that can or should be on a great jazz album. It opens with a bright uptempo, Johnny Carisi’s “Springsville,” with the orchestra’s usual lead trumpeter, Ryan Kisor, playing the primary solo. Dave Brubeck’s “The Duke” is a swinging and catchy dedication from one jazz piano giant to another. There’s also the Davis original, “Miles Ahead,” a relatively tranquil piece that, as musical director and trombonist Chris Crenshaw, pointed out, seems like an outgrowth of “Moon Dreams” from the earlier “Birth of the Cool” project.There were two works inherited from Ahmad Jamal, the pianist’s own highly-danceable “New Rhumba” and his adaptation of “I Don’t Wanna Be Kissed,” a delightful 1950 pop trifle introduced by Doris Day, here featuring Kellin Hanas. Davis’s 1957 solo is virtually the only example of him playing in a way that could be called “cute,” as if he were channeling St. Louis mentor Clark Terry, who could play trumpet in a way that sounded like he was blowing kisses.Evans’s own original, the Spanish-tinged “Blues for Pablo,” is perhaps the most serious piece on the album, here with Michael Rodriguez playing in a way that, as Evans told singer Jon Hendricks (who told me) conveys the suffering that the Spanish endured under Franco; it also anticipates the Iberian sounds on “Sketches of Spain” three years later. I regretted the absence of the two pieces, the album’s most purely classical chart, “Filles De Cadiz” by Leo Delibes, a French homage to Spanish señoritas, and Bobby Troup’s “The Meaning of the Blues,” a melancholy minor key torch song. The second half included five selections from the Davis-Evans “Porgy and Bess,” among them some of the more famous works from the Gershwin opera, “It Ain’t Necessarily So” featuring Kenny Rampton and JALC stalwart Marcus Printup getting to shine on “There’s a Boat That’s Leaving Soon for New York.” His wife, veteran harpist Reza Printup, was one of several additional players coming on board for one piece from “Sketches of Spain,” namely “Solea.”The second half was highly enjoyable, and served as a teaser for a full-length performance of those two albums, which is coming to Birdland for a week starting on May 26, via conductor Ryan Truesdell and the Gil Evans Project orchestra. But the main event at JALC this weekend is the nearly complete classic “Miles Ahead.” The draconian and Dracula-like Miles is there, to be sure, on “Blues for Pablo” and J. J. Johnson’s “Lament” especially. But we also experience Miles smiling, laughing, and loving life throughout. The most optimistic number in the stack — and the only show tune — is Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin’s “My Ship,” As arranged by Evans and played by Mr. Kisor, the melody conveys a child-like sense of wonder, which is how it was introduced in the 1941 “Lady in the Dark.” Here, the augmented orchestra, including bass trombones, tuba, and a trio of French horns, becomes a ship of dreams.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Smiles on Miles at Centennial Celebration

More from the New York Sun

Trump Winds Up His Summit Confident in Having Built a Rapport on Crucial Issues, From Iran to Trade

With ‘No-Bad-Idea’ Brainstorm, Kamala Harris Rains on America in the Name of ‘Reform’

Phone Companies Plan To Work Together To End Coverage Dead Zones

Federal Government Seeks To Seize Land From Catholic Dioceses in New Mexico To Build Border Wall

Gavin Newsom’s Kamala Harris Problem Could Derail His Presidential Prospects

The Beltway’s Businessmen Are Losing Sight of How Free Markets Work

Preakness Offers Chance for Female Trainers To Complete Triple Crown

Populist Independent’s Moving Life Story Stands To Upend Nebraska Congressional Race