Andy Haas – In Praise of Insomnia (Resonant Music, 2026)

 

By Matty Bannond

Up to 35 percent of adults in the US have symptoms of insomnia (according to a 2025 study ). But those people’s night-time struggles vary significantly. They may have difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or returning to sleep. Patients can suffer short-term or chronic afflictions. And the condition can be linked to anxiety, depression, chronic pain or other conditions.

This twelve-track album by improvising saxophonist Andy Haas expresses the peculiarities of those various bedtime hardships—from overactive synapses and hyperactive fingertips to loneliness, self-pity and despair. It was recorded on the Winter Solstice of 2025 and presents Haas alone with his saxophones, as well as a Nano Pulsar pedal that chops, splits and reshapes his instrument’s sound.

Nifty pedalwork opens up an expansive spectrum of manipulated outputs. Several tracks feature duplicate voices that suggest Haas talking to himself in the twilight. “Heart Less” involves two long-note drones that start at opposite ends of the saxophone’s register and meet in the middle. “This Dark Land” uses a similar technique, with voices helixing around a central pattern of changing pitch.

Bursts of sound and oscillating frequencies are also common textural tricks. On “An Attenuated Goodbye”, a bluesy initial passage flits from singing to silence and back again. “The Cold Inside Us” has a piercing, car-alarm quality. Both pieces remind the listener of nights where a painful incident from the past refuses to subside or a concern about the future declines to wait until morning.

Amid the midnight misery, there is a playful property to this thirty-minute experiment. In general, Haas tends to favor the higher register of his instrument. This adds a squeaky cheekiness to tracks like “Sense Less” and “Sleep Less”. His playing has a more noodly nature here, like a person exploring the liberating options that become available when the rest of humanity is in the sack.

In Praise of Insomnia balances tonal and textural variety with recurring motifs, methodologies and moods. Although Andy Haas is a detail-driven artist, his improvisations often express a light-humored and capricious temper. This album is unlikely to help anybody fall asleep, stay asleep or return to sleep. But it might coax their mind down intriguing paths while they navigate restless hours in the day or the night.

The album is available on CD and as a digital download here .

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Cath Roberts and Olie Brice - Setpieces (Relative Pitch, 2026)

By Hrayr Attarian

English saxophonist Cath Roberts is an innovative improviser and composer, a graphic artist, organizer, and educator. Roberts’ frequent collaborator and compatriot, bassist Olie Brice, is equally imaginative as his music blurs the line between pre-written and spontaneously created. The pair shares sublime camaraderie, and their professional relationship enhances the brilliance of their individual expressions. All this is fully displayed on their 2026 duo release the provocative Setpieces.

The album starts on a riotous note with “Tensile”. Roberts’ fiery refrains spar with Brice’s angular, con arco lines. The delightfully dissonant dialogue seamlessly goes from a passionate, extroverted repartee to parallel introspective musings. Robert’s reverberating baritone complements Brice’s darkly hued bass as their respective improvisations elegantly waver between converging and going their separate ways.

This stimulating conversation continues on “Cascades”. Both Roberts and Brice, individually and together, channel more boppish sensibilities without limiting the freedom of their performances. Roberts’ alto has an incandescent, lyrical edge, while Brice creates a dynamic framework with his resonant tones. He plays increasingly complex melodic fragments, to which Roberts responds with agile, muscular phrases.

The two musicians mirror one another with clever and inventive ways to make their duets more than the addition of two separate solos. On the melancholic “Anthills”, for instance, Roberts’ pops match Brice’s plucked note

s while the saxophonist’s pensive undulations complement the bassist’s dramatic drones. The track grows more wistful as it progresses to its conclusion, and the captivating tension keeps the mood expectant.

The poetic sense and intriguing ambiance crystallize on “Shadow Puppets”. Both musicians echo each other with long, mournful soliloquies. Then, as the tune evolves, Roberts’ elegiac extemporization weaves a complex path through Brice’s intricate rhythmic tapestry. The discourse is laced with mysticism, especially as Brice’s dark, percussive passages intermix with Roberts’ warm, yearning ones.

This stimulating work showcases the imaginative creativity of two improvisational masters. It is also a perfect example of a sublime balance between individualism and collaborative teamwork. The result is one of the best releases of 2026 so far.

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Jacopo Ferrazza & Sebastian Marino - Apeiron (Teal Dreamers, 2026)

By Sammy Stein 

Apeiron is the new project by double bassist and composer Jacopo Ferrazza and pianist and composer Sebastian Marino, released on CD and digital formats on Teal Dreamers Factory.

The press release says that on the album, ‘double bass, piano, and experimental electronics coexist without hierarchies, generating a sound environment in which timbral origins often become indistinguishable.’ But a listen reveals this is not quite true. The timbral origins of the instruments and the electronics are distinguishable, with the deep body of the bass providing a definitive, characteristic timbre that no electronics can replicate. What does happen, however, is that the sounds of the double bass as it is played with the bow, or pizzicato, the piano, and the electronics of the mini-Moog, synth, and Hammond, intermingle and entwine, creating an effect akin to multi-instrumental music, yet the nuances and sonic elements of bass and piano are discernible. The electronics act as an extension of the instrumental dialogue through which the two musicians expand the possibilities of listening and interaction. Interestingly, the music circles around a poem:

Close Your Eyes
And Step Beyond the Edge of What You Know
There Is a Flame Inside You
Ancient Patient Waiting
It Has No Name
It Has No Beginning
It Is the Breath Before the First Word Was Spoken
Feel It
Rising Softly Through Your Spine
Like Liquid Gold in the Dark
You Are Not the Body
You Are Not the Thought
You Are the Pulse Beneath the Silence
Let the World Dissolve
Let the Noise Fall Away
There Is Only This Moment
This Warmth This Sacred Unfolding
Whisper to Yourself: I Remember
Because You Do
You Have Always Known
And Now the Flame Awakens

Each track is titled as a line from the poem, so both the concept and the music create a whole. The music is divided into two macro blocks, the first ten tracks form Epanastasi (Repetition) and the second eleven form Oneiro (Dreams). The title Apeiron is Greek and means boundless or undefined, and is apt for the music, which sees the musicians create landscapes of sound ranging from gentle whispers of entreaty to forceful, expressive density. Each track forms its own encapsulated narrative yet is linked to the rest of the music in subtle ways. The relentless repetition of the piano note on ‘Close Your Eyes’, surrounded by experimental, explorative sounds, is intense, yet somehow compelling as it leads to the short, intense forty-six seconds of ‘And Step beyond The Edge of What You Know’, which melds itself into ‘There is A Flame Inside You’, which feels almost ecclesiastical with its organ lines and vocal electronics. The bass swells in glorious tones out of the generous mix of sound, and the piano gently calms the madness that appears to be present in the music. You can almost feel the intention of Ferrazza, which, he describes as creating music, “where bass, piano and electronics function as a single evolving system.” There is a sense of the instruments feeding each other ideas, snippets to develop and run with, or shifts in mind and direction.

The lines of the poem as track titles offer concepts but rarely fit the atmosphere of the track to which they are assigned – but here the poem is a tool to weld the music together and give a route to follow, whether that is strictly or using diverse routes. The music unfolds, it is dynamic and, in places, terrifyingly beautiful in its fragility. Like on ‘Ancient Patient Waiting,’ where Ferrazza’s bass rises, its voice a gorgeous solo, its timbre palpable, the sounds swirling around the wooden body of the instrument and emerging smooth and warm, or the gentleness of both piano and bass on ‘It Has No Name.’

There are several standout tracks, including ‘It Has No Beginning,’ with its otherworldly atmosphere, which merges seamlessly into ‘It Is The Breath Before The First Word Was Spoken’ where deep electronics and synth lines give this a seventies prog vibe.

Both musicians have classical groundings, and this reveals itself in their harmonies and naturally evolving chordal episodes on some tracks, including the dynamic and emotive ‘Feel It.’

I found nothing but good in this music; the evolution of sounds is dynamic and interesting, so that even someone who is not fond of synth or Hammond found it incredibly engaging. The minds of these two musicians come together through their instruments to make music that is astonishing in the many ways it manages to engage the listener.

Both musicians have space to shine – like the bass rising on ‘Like Liquid Gold In The Dark’ and ‘You Are Not The Body,’ where Ferrazza finds endless elements of the instrument, or the piano on ‘You Are Not The Thought.’

Some tracks are an entity of their own, while others merge into each other, broken not by a change of tempo but a change of direction, slight then deliberate and divergent. Like from ‘You Are the Pulse Beneath the Silence’ to’ Let the World Dissolve.’

The second block of tracks (dreams) seems like one narrative, with different chapters, the music a changing dialogue. There are more electronic sounds in this block, and on ‘Whisper to Yourself I Remember,’ there is a sense of a hellscape as voices and strange electronic background sounds make the music rather than instruments.

Interestingly enough, truculent piano, swooping bass, and weird electric sounds work a treat, like on ‘You Have Always Known.’ The final track sees a return to piano and bass playing at its best and most expressive.

This is a different step, as Ferrazza says, from his previous work. The album was fully improvised and recorded in a single session with no editing. The music unfurls through listening, tension, silence, and real-time transformation, moving between free improvisation and a more textural, electroacoustic space.

Ferrazza said he felt this might resonate with my interest in exploratory and boundary-crossing music, and he was right, but this music will resonate with many listeners because it is energetic when it needs to be, quiet when this is called for, and the music seems to follow an exquisite rhythm that somehow is defined and sits beautifully in the mind of the listener.

It is a testimony to how good musical dialogue becomes when musicians have a long association, such as the fifteen years of working together behind Ferrazza and Marino. I cannot recommend this album more.

 

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Joel Harrison and Friends - In a Silent Way Reimagined

A few weeks ago we shared a video from a group out of Germany taking electric Miles out for a spin. Seems like they aren't the only ones - here is guitarist Joel Harrison with some folks certainly known to the readers of the blog jamming on In a Silent Way" at Big Ears this past year. There is a recording of the whole meet-up that is slated for release in August.

To cap off our Miles Davis tribute week, here is 'In a Silent Way Reimagined' with Chad Taylor, Jerome Harris, Micah Thomas, Sam Sadigursky, Brandon Seabrook, Tim Keiper and Joel Harrison. 

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Miles Davis @ 100 - A Celebration Through Albums (6)

The final day of our celebration of Miles Davis at 100. See day 1, day 2, day 3, and day 4 respectively. 

 

By Paul Acquaro

 

Bitches Brew ... the first time I heard it, I was in high school. A friend had beaten me to the jazz-rock trough and had been drinking liberally. He effused about Billy Cobham, talked in hushed tones about Mahavishnu Orchestra and conspiratorially name dropped the title of Miles Davis' electric masterwork. Coming from a steady diet of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Violent Femmes, I wasn't so sure I shared in the taste, yet. I picked up a copy of Bitches Brew and popped it into the tape machine ... and I didn't get it. It was chaotic and harsh to my then tender, structure-addicted ears. Today, I hear only creamy tones and fluffy textures, I can not imagine not luxuriating in the sweet drippings of a Fender Rhodes, but that was then. What turned out was, I really needed was a gentler introduction, an opening of my taste buds to the exotic riches on offer, what it turned out I needed was the 1968 release Filles De Kilimanjaro, the first of the so called 'Directions in Music' labeled albums that was used on Mile's electric output until 1973. 

Filles De Kilimanjaro (Columbia, 1969)

A so-called transitional album, Filles De Kilimanjaro featured the 'second great quintet' with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams and Wayne Shorter on the first recording session. On a second session, Davis replaced Hancock and Carter with Chick Corea and Dave Holland. The resulting album found electric keyboard and bass along side their acoustic counterparts, looser musical structures, and the introduction of more straight-ahead rhythm and melodic snippets and statements. The near hypnotic pulse of the opening track 'Frelon brun' and the crispy blasts of trumpet on 'Petits Machins' fascinated me. However, it was the title track that had the most power effect. The electric bass most of all, driving and simple, it anchored the music. I finally heard the trumpeter's melodies and the shimmering keyboard work in their fullness. Here was Davis and his luminous crew laying the foundations for the even more abstracted constructions on Bitches Brew. By then, Teo Macero would be cutting and pasting together the long jams into tracks, but at this point they were still somewhat traditional songs. This was the gateway for me, I began developing the taste for electric Miles Davis music that sustains me to this day. 

 

Star People (Columbia, 1983) 

A little later in my listening life, a slightly tattered copy of the Miles Davis box-set The CBS Years 1955 - 1985, which I likely picked up at Princeton Record Exchange for dirt cheap, did it again. This time, I was caught by surprise by the track 'Star on Cicely.' I hadn't yet progressed into 80s Miles, or rather, the snippets that I had listened hadn't generated the enthusiasm I felt for the 'electric Miles' period. Something changed with this one. Excerpted from the 1983 album Star People, 'Star on Cicely' had an unexpected rocking punch to it. The music is slicker than the 70s output, song structure is back and Miles' playing is sharp. What I liked even more was the guitar work on the album, which was primarily Mike Stern with some contributions from John Scofield. Apparently, the head melody of the track was derived from an improvised line that Scofield played - though I'm not sure where I got that information from - regardless the song that was subsequently crafted had a lot of moxie. The album itself is rather joyful. The opening track, 'Come Get It,' is a barn-burner, with Davis ablaze on the track, bassist Marcus Miller providing a funk grounding, and Stern comping with spunk. I don't care for everything on the album, elements of 'Speak' and 'U 'n' I' are harbingers of cheesier times coming, but at least 3/4 of this album still resonates for me. 

 

I learned about the live recordings We Want Miles! and Miles! Miles! Miles! a little later and tracked down both albums, both of which captured the magical moments found on Star People. 

 

Bill Laswell - Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969–1974 (Sony, 1998) 

Last but not least, I must mention Bill Laswell's masterful remix album Panthalassa. This album rewired my musical brain again when it came out in '98. Laswell used Davis' electric era music as a source, and employed the studio to emphasize and de-emphasize different instruments, mixing the impressionistic sounds of In a Silent Way to give it a new punch, adding a dub foundation to parts of Agharta to work up a different mood and finding a new song in 'He Loved Him Madly.' Sad that a follow-up to Panthalassa never made it to release. 

 

I could keep on going, as I slobber ecstatically when thinking of Live-Evil, Tribute to Jack Johnson, Big Fun, Get Up with It, On the Corner, At Fillmore, Dark Magus, Agartha and Pangaea, but I think you get the picture.

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Miles Davis @ 100 - A Celebration Through Albums (5)

Day four of our celebration of Miles Davis at 100. See day one, two and three. 

Pangaea (Columbia, 1975)

The influence that Bitches Brew had on jazz and music in general is impossible to overstate, a monumental album that set the course for generations of musicians to come and made waves so huge their ripples are still being felt today. But Bitches was only the beginning and the aesthetic that Davis started developing on it and later expanded on On the Corner only finally found its real apex with Pangaea.

Like all the best jazz albums, Pangaea was recorded live (on the same day as the also excellent Agartha) and, to me, it's the gold standard for what a live album should be. The music is ecstatic and full of life, the interplay is unmatched, the rhythm section is relentless, the solos blistering. The two long improvisations are expertly developed, not a second goes to waste and the whole band is in a state of grace and ferocious intensity. We could call what the musicians are doing here Fusion, but with none of the cheese, empty virtuosity, plasticky lack of teeth and all other negative connotations that the genre has accrued through the years. This record has plenty of teeth, it's true, unadulterated black music. It's a long, heavy journey that's sometimes straight ahead rocking, sometimes funky and, at the end, even swinging, almost as if going full circle on a career that redefined what jazz could be many times.

Davis spent his entire life searching and evolving, uncaring of the opinions of critics and listeners, and nowhere is that attitude more obvious than on this record. It's yet another testament to Davis' vision and ability as bandleader. Unapologetic, self-indulgent (in the best way), raw and expressive, it feels as vital and visceral today as it must have felt 51 years ago. Most of all, it's a really good time. 

 

- William Rossi 

 

 

Agartha (Columbia, 1975)

Grew up with it. It was the first and for a long time the only Miles Davis album I was exposed to, recorded (live in Japan) and released the year of my birth. Along with just as cryptic to my Southern rural France ears Herbie Hancock's Thrust and Sun Ra's Atlantis – it opened my listening vistas and shaped my aesthetic compass to a considerable degree, in spite of or because it took forever to « get it ». With a sense of danger as if the black discs would burn my fingers, unlock an ancient curse, I regularly extracted the double LP from my stepfather's record collection, cautiously positioned one side on the turntable and, sitting on the floor, would lose myself in its unfathomable, esoteric mysteries, that began even before the music (side length jams that already felt like a transgression – with the whole of side A titled « Prelude »... which, as it that wasn't enough, continued on part of side B!) resounded. The inner sleeve had winged angels or devils perched on stairs next to temple pillars. The front cover showed a megacity possibly shrouded in smog or/and enduring a heatwave, surrounded by tropical vegetation and Polynesian women – while a variant on the back had sea lifeforms instead of palm trees and a spaceship in the middle, an idea which must have been in the air since a celestial vehicle also adorned Parliament's Mothership Connection that year. Hendrixian guitars on the loose, hard-driving beats, simple and unrelenting electric bass lines, wild organ outbursts (I later linked Miles' haphazard-yet-awesome organ playing to that of Fela Kuti and James Brown) made up the ingredients of the stew, while the jazz elements mostly came from Sonny Fortune's saxophones and flute solos; meanwhile, Miles' plugged trumpet seemed more interested in being an element of the textural and rhythmical whole than in occupying the front spot for too long. This music didn't make sense, as far as what I had been told about the artform. Sprawled over the whole of side C, « Interlude » (!) was propelled by a rapid-fire riff that Miles re-used a decade later on You're Under Arrest's « Street Scenes » (aka « Theme from Jack Johnson / Intro » on the 2022-revealed version without overdubs on That's What Happened - The Bootleg Series vol.7). Funkier than a fish market. Odd, disquieting percussion noises gave the relatively gentler but no less befuddling side D its peculiar mood. Back in the day, I didn't think of looking up the musicians' names nor had the slighest idea where they came from, what their lives and experiences were like. Somehow this alien music was telling me something about them on a deeper level, which I'm still sensitive to, to this day.

- David Cristol

 

Inner gatefold

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Cookin’ (Prestige, 1957)

My first conscious encounter with jazz came through two records: John Coltrane’s Blue Train and Miles Davis’s Ballads & Blues . These two CDs were part of a magazine collection sold at newsstands, for a reasonable price. The Ballads & Blues compilation brings together tracks from different sessions and, while not especially coherent, its warm sound and velvety ballads still fascinate me. I gradually explored Miles’ discography and eventually arrived at the records Cookin’, Relaxin’, Steamin’, Workin ’. Of these, Cookin’ grabbed my attention the most. The sleeve design, simple and perfect. Just four tracks: opener “My Funny Valentine”, eternally beautiful, here made even more so by the sharp-edged trumpet; “Blues by Five”, which bluesy piano won me over on first listen and opened the way for the trumpet, which seemed to enter timidly before fully asserting itself; “Airegin”, with its supersonic rhythm and the horns in unison; “Tune Up / When Lights Are Low”: after the drums came in, the uplifting momentum of the tune swept me away. The sequence, flawless, stayed on repeat for a very long time.

In a Silent Way (Columbia, 1969)

Later, I reached the electric phase. Like everyone else, I became fascinated by almost everything from Bitches Brew onwards, notably the albums On the Corner and Jack Johnson. But the one that impacted me the most was In a Silent Way. First of all, the stellar line-up: Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Dave Holland, Tony Williams. Everything sounded new and different. The overlapping keyboards, the drifting sounds. In its atmospheric character, I could feel the musicians searching. I could hear the exploration, the discovery, the musicians locking into a perfect groove on “It’s About That Time”. The trumpet, soaring above everything else, expansive and radiant. On first listen, Teo Macero’s cut-and-splice editing sounded somewhat strange, but the album quickly became an all-time favorite. Our connection to music passes through emotional territory, and these records belong to that landscape. 

- Nuno Catarino 

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You’re Under Arrest (Columbia, 1985)

At age 14 in 1970 Miles Davis entered my life with the magical Bitches Brew . At 15, my heroes – unlike my schoolmates, all rock fans – were Black : Ornette, Bird, Miles, and Jimi Hendrix, who for me belonged to jazz too. In1971, I attended the Milan jazz festival: Ornette, Gato Barbieri, and Miles with Jarrett on keyboards. In the autumn of 1973, I witnessed, at the Bologna jazz festival, one of the Miles’ visionary dark funk sets. Shortly thereafter, he retired. At the beginning of the eighties he was back. Just after his return, I attended a concert of his in Rome; I introduced and reviewed it enthusiastically in the extreme Left wing newspaper Lotta Continua (“ongoing struggle”). Indeed Miles’ resurrection felt like more than a musical event, and in 1985 he participated in the track “The Struggle Continues” on the anti-apartheid record Sun City… From 1984 onward, Miles started to tour Europe every summer, sometimes twice a year and turned out to be something of a “familiar” presence. I loved The Man with the Horn, We Want Miles, Star People, Decoy, but You’re Under Arrest was my album of choice, from the first seconds of the opening track, with the sublime, pressing rhythm of “One Phone Call/Street Scenes”, to the wonderful lyricism of “Human Nature”, “MD1/Something’s On Your Mind” and “Time After Time”. The album was released in 1985, the year I started to work as program chief editor of the independent/community station Radio Popolare: I chose “Human Nature” as the end theme song of a daily music program. During Miles’ last decade, his music was full of a life-affirming energy, with a magnificent vein of melancholy, and subtly hendrixian traits; he was not only superbly managing rhythms and colours, but deeply digging into the rhythm and the colour, the feeling of the times, exactly like Prince. His stage bands were ready to answer his impulses, giving endless new versions of the material. I saw him as the Duke Ellington of the 80s. Only Prince and Cecil Taylor were as exciting as Miles, and attending their concerts was as emotionally charged as attending those of Miles. 

- Marcello Lorrai

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Nuno Catarino is editorial coordinator of jazz.pt since 2022. He contributes to the national newspaper Público, where he has written since 2007. He is the author, with Márcia Lessa, of the book Improvisando (2019). 

Marcello Lorrai produces & presents the weekly radio program Jazz Anthology on Radio Popolare (Mondays at 11 pm); publishes festival reports and artists interviews in the daily newspaper Il Manifesto, and is an author of books such as Africana (reviewing modern music from the African continent, Casanova & Chianura Edizioni) and William Parker - Conversazioni Sul Jazz (Auditorium Edizioni). He also writes liner notes, notably for albums by the Italian Instabile Orchestra since 1995. 

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Miles Davis @ 100 - A Celebration Through Albums (4)

Day three of our celebration of Miles Davis at 100. See day one and two here.

By Stef Gijssels

The year 1970 marked an extraordinary turning point in Miles Davis’s career and artistic evolution. He transformed himself from a jazz musician into a figure with the presence — and attitude — of a rock star. His music became increasingly exploratory and electric: wah-wah trumpet effects, fractured and layered textures, electric piano, electric bass, and organ all became central to his sound. Equally important were the relentless rhythms, the unrestrained improvisations, and the trance-like length and density of the performances. It represented a complete break from conventional jazz harmony, moving instead toward something more primal, ritualistic, and less bound by eclectic convention. While many jazz purists rejected this new direction, rock audiences embraced it enthusiastically.

He performed with an exceptional list of musicians in this year, all of which individually became famous in their own right, and some of them created the most popular fusion bands of the seventies and eighties: the John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea's Return to Forever, and Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter's Weather Report. Miles Davis opened the door to something else completely. 

The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 (Columbia, 2005) 

My preferred album by Miles Davis is without a doubt "Bitches Brew", followed by "In A Silent Way", discussed before. From the same period are a few other excellent albums, including this compilation released in 2005 only. It was recorded live over a few nights in December 1970 at The Cellar Door, a club in Washington DC. The six-CD box comprises six of the ten recorded tracks, some of which have already officially been released as part of "Live-Evil". 

With its six hours of music, this album is guaranteed to give you an overdose of the Miles of that period: lengthy tracks, improvisations, brutal yet quality interplay, some moments of fun even. You get five different versions of "Directions" (also called "Call It Anything" on the triple vinyl of the Isle of Wight Rock Festival of 1970) and "What I Say" (on Live-Evil),  four versions of "Honky Tonk", also called "Funky Tonk" on "Live-Evil", and two versions of "It's About That Time" (from "In A Silent Way"). Some parts of the improvisation and "Inamorata", were also used on "Live-Evil" and called "Inamorata and Narration by Conrad Roberts". 

So much for the factoids, but it's about the music and that is absolutely stellar, as is the quality of the recording. Some call this "fusion" or "jazz rock" but those are truly deceptive classifications for this period in Davis's career. Yes, there is a strong and solid rhythm section, yet the themes and the improvisation are as open as jazz can be, with solid interplay for sure, but still far away from the soulless over-polished technical pyrotechnics of so much of fusion music. The pieces are long, and actually some performances move from one piece into the next without a break, it's a continuous never-ending party of great music, raw at times, offering the level of spontaneous creation that cannot happen without some raw or noisy overall sound. The fun part of the many versions is that it allows you to compare the freedom that the musicians have in their performances, and the difference in their collective rendition of the same music.

The band are Miles Davis on trumpet, Gary Bartz on saxes, Keith Jarrett on electric piano and organ, Michael Henderson on electric bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, Airo Moreira on percussion (except disc one), and with John McLaughlin joining on guitar for disc 5 & 6 (recorded on December 19, 1970). 

A stellar band at the height of its skills, and music that is relatively unique in its sound and quality. It's a lot to digest, a huge meal of exquisite ingredients. 

A Tribute To Jack Johnson (Columbia, 1970)

This album was recorded right after "Bitches Brew", in April 1970, and was conceived as a soundtrack for a documentary by Bill Cayton about the heavyweight world champion boxer Jack Johnson.

It contains two lengthy pieces, performed by two different line-ups: Right Off" has Miles Davis on trumpet, Steve Grossman on saxophone, John McLaughlin on guitar, Herbie Hancock on organ, Michael Henderson on bass, and Billy Cobham on drums, and "Yesternow" has Miles Davis on trumpet, John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharock on guitar, Bennie Maupin on bass clarinet, Chick Corea on electric piano, Dave Holland on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums.

The two tracks are heavily post-produced, a kind of collage by producer Teo Macero, whose "cut and paste" approach of different jam sections and solos are brought to a new level. The collage is not always really audible although some radical rhythm changes in the pieces indicate some artificial interventions. 

While waiting for Miles to arrive, McLaughlin starts the first track by a rock-ish guitar vamp, and is joined by Cobham and Henderson on bass and drums. Apparently Herbie Hancock happened to be around the studio that day, so he joined too. It was not yet meant to be recorded, yet it was. The trumpet just joins after a few minutes and the piece gets its full voice. As the Miles Davis website explains: "“Right Off” (the opposite of the catchphrase of the day, “right on”) travels a long path, including a moment (18:44) when McLaughlin repeatedly hammers a riff from Sly Stone’s “Sing A Simple Song”, and into a series of ringing power chords, a searing saxophone solo, and further guitar ribaldry. “Yesternow” (the very title balancing past and present) opens with a more spaced-out feel, includes a snippet of “Shhh/Peaceful” from In A Silent Way (Miles literally sampling himself!)"  

Both tracks are excellent, post-produced, collaged or not. The music is hypnotic as is most of Davis's work of that period, yet it adds the specific political message of civil rights in the USA. Even if this theme is omnipresent in his work implicitly, here it becomes a real message. The album ends with the voice of Brock Peters, speaking on behalf of Jack Johnson in the documentary. “I’m Jack Johnson, heavyweight champion of the world! I’m black! They never let me forget it. I’m black all right. I’ll never let them forget it.” 

Miles Davis writes in the liner notes: “Johnson portrayed Freedom… the more they hated him, the more money he made, the more women he got and the more wine he drank.”

Freedom is to be liberated from the shackles of preconceived notions, of conventions, of racist history. 

This music is Freedom. 

Live At Fillmore (Columbia, 1970)

Recorded live at the Filmore in June 1970, this album takes advantage of the success of "In A Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew". The show contains much of the material of both albums, again with a great band of Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett on electric keyboards, Steve Grossman on saxophones and flute, Dave Holland on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, Airto Moreira on percussion. The music is edited to allow for all major compositions to be represented on this double vinyl. Tracks move almost seamlessly into one another. At the same time, you never know about what was edited: "Miles was in the habit of kicking off tunes before the previous one had ended, overlapping in into another, making it difficult to pull out discreet performances", and even stronger, making the band follow suit instantly. 

The sound quality is excellent, and fans of the electric Miles should definitely check it out. 

Live-Evil (Columbia, 1971)

Recorded between February and December 1970, "Live-Evil" ends the phenomenal year of Miles psychedelic jazz style. 

The entire cast of musicians is actually rarely a complete band, but an ensemble that changes on every track. Miles Davis on trumpet, Gary Bartz, Steve Grossman, Wayne Shorter on sax, John McLaughlin on electric guitar, Keith Jarrett on organ, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul on electric piano, Michael Henderson, Dave Holland and Ron Carter on bass, Billy Cobham, Jack DeJohnette and Hermeto Pascoal on drums and vocals, Airto Moreira and Khalil Balakrishna on electric sitar. 

The label describes the album appropriately: "it bulges at the seams in its effort to contain all Miles was up to the year before—the crazy diversity of experiences in 1970. (The sounds) ranged from rock-band abandon spilling off of small club stages, to ambient jams and mood pieces crafted in the recording studio. He was working a wider sonic mix than ever—wah-wah trumpet (within the album’s first minute!) and Indian sitar, electric guitar and electronic keyboards, whistling and vocalizing and shouts, spoken poetry and the “speaking” of the Brazilian cuíca all over. The music is a crazy psychedelic mix—not jazz or rock or funk. Not this or that. Willfully kaleidoscopic and boldly futuristic."

It is a strange album, with many different styles and unexpected twists and turns. It is not a "live" album as its title might suggest, but rather an collection of musical pieces of which some were recorded live. The core of the album is made of three very long tracks "What I Say" (phenomenal!), "Funky Tonk", and "Inamorata", tied together with shorter and more subdued interludes. 

The album ends with a poem by Conrad Roberts

"Inamorato 

Mission: music, masculinity

Master of the art: music

Who is this music that which description may never justify?

Can the ocean be described?

Fathomless music

Body of all that is

Live ever lastingly

Men, initiate

Inamorato, your music art tomorrow's unknown known life

I love tomorrow"

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Miles Davis @ 100 - A Celebration Through Albums (3)

By Stef Gijssels

I was too young in the sixties to witness their music firsthand, yet by the time I came of age in the seventies, Jimi Hendrix had become a kind of god to me — followed later by Miles Davis and then John Coltrane. What has always astonished me is how - within the same decade - each of these towering musical geniuses forged an entirely new sound and voice from within tradition itself: honouring it, absorbing it, yet ultimately pushing beyond its boundaries until they burst free from the constraints of form altogether. Out of that rupture, they created new musical languages — languages that continue to resonate deeply with so many people and that express emotions for which words could never truly exist.

Jimi Hendrix took the blues and then practised relentlessly on his guitar to expand its vocabulary, its power and its electrifying effects. This was the period of polished 2-minute pop songs, of refined vocals and backing vocals, of nicely fitting suits and the comfort of going to mom and dad in the evening. Hendrix tore it all down, yet built it up again, exposing humanity to a sonic avalanche never heard before (and rarely heard since): loud, brutal, technically brilliant, sensitive and deeply moving. 

Miles Davis was a little older, yet came later to my musical horizon, and I was sold immediately. My first experience was with "In A Silent Way", and especially the title track with its steady rhythm, its hypnotic groove and its brilliant trumpet-playing is still engrained in my brain. A decade earlier, he had already changed the course history of jazz by "Kind of Blue", a milestone then, yet when listening to it now, you wonder what all the fuzz was about, but that's primarily because it influenced all jazz after its release, as if people wondered what was so new about Picasso, who might seem somewhat conventional from today's point of view. Then "Bitches Brew". This was it. The power, the drive, the relentless and uncompromising rhythm section, the stellar musicianship, and this "man with the horn", creating sounds also never heard before, with or without "wah wah". It defied any type of soloing heard before. It opened space, and showed that anything was possible, even chaos and noise, without restrictions with the exception of the piece's overall coherence.  

John Coltrane - also born in 1926 - was the third luminary. Like Davis, and in collaboration with him, they released some of the more memorable albums of the fifties with the Miles Davis Quintet: "Cookin'", "Relaxin'", "Workin'", and "Steamin'" and with the sextet later the iconic"Kind of Blue". Then he single-handedly pulled jazz out of the smoky bar rooms of the entertainment industry and turned it into Art with a capital "A": "A Love Supreme" turned music upside down. It showed something grand, a level of spirituality and personal freedom of expression rarely heard in music before, yet still compelling and mysterious despite its novel approach. Even a simple tune such as "My Favorite Things" became a mesmerising listening experience when performed by Coltrane. With "Interstellar Space", his duo album with drummer Rashied Ali, he broke with all conventions, yet despite the negative comments from the jazz community, his technique and incredible inventiveness were beyond comparison. 

Despite the profound differences in their music — free blues, jazz rock, and free jazz — all three men broke with convention and revealed new ways of expressing what it means to be human. They were open to new forms, they integrated sounds from other musical styles, they were endlessly creative. Despite the many opportunities for commercial success, they kept searching, stretching their performances to lengthy and grandiose improvisations, the kind of music that would never get any radio airplay, let alone be of interest to mainstream audiences. They each struggled with drugs and addiction, but I don’t believe that alone explains the parallels between them. Even if their music was not "political" in the real sense of the word, they represented the voice of African Americans and their fight for civil rights - check Davis' "Tribute To Jack Johnson" as an example - but their music went much deeper, it was (is) the voice of more authentic feelings of anger, sadness, agony, despair, hope and transcendence than the entertainment industry could ever offer. They share a devotion to technique, not as a goal but as a means to free sound from historical constraints, and to create something more expansive, monumental, authentic, existential, spiritual, and deeply human. They transformed music. They created great art. Each possessed a sound and a voice instantly recognisable from afar, unlike anything found in music today.

Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix planned to record together. They had been preparing this for a while, and both had a show at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 - and by the way, it's truly amazing that Davis was invited to play at a rock festival - yet a few weeks later Hendrix died unexpectedly. 

Three exceptional musicians, three exceptional artists somehow met and did something similar profound for music at the same juncture in time and place. They combined creative discipline and control on the one hand, with ecstatic improvisation and raw expression on the other. 

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Miles Davis @ 100 - A Celebration Through Albums (2)

Day two of our celebration of Miles Davis at 100. See day one here.

On the Corner (Columbia Records, 1972)

Abrasive, Alcoholic, Anarchic, Anticlimax, Aphrodisiac, Arrogant, Autoimmune, Barbaric, Belligerent, Brash, Challenging, Contagious, Controversial, Cruel, Cubist, Cynical, Dangerous, Disloyal, Disturbing, Divining, Dizzy, Electrifying, Engaging, Essential, Evocative, Exhilarating, Expressionist, Fearless, Fussy, Futurist, Ghastly, Greasy, Grumpy, Hallucinogenic, Hardcore, Heavenly, Hypnotic, Infernal, Inflammable, Innocent, Intriguing, Irritating, Labyrinthine, Liberating, Loud, Magnetic, Material, Meaningless, Metropolitan, Monochrome, Mysterious, Neon, Neurasthenic, Nocturnal, Oblique, Obnoxious, Ominous, Polluted, Polychromatic, Pornographic, Precursory, Pretentious, Primal, Psychotropic, Quirky, Quixotic, Raw, Reckless, Rusty, Saturated, Self-indulgent, Sexy, Spiraling, Syncretic, Telluric, Temperamental, Timeless, Toxic, Uncanny, Uncompromising, Unruly, Vibrant, Visionary, Vulgar, Wicked, Xenomorphic, Yucky, Zippy: QUINTESSENTIAL, BLACK, MILES.

 - Ferruccio Martinotti 

 

ESP (Columbia Records, 1965)

Miles Davis’s second great quintet put a fantastic four behind the great leader: Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. Their 1965 ESP is the perfect result. Miles was the philosopher’s stone: put him in the presence of a potential genius stuck in a rut, two virtuosos coming to the studio with mediocre melodies, or two simple chords longing for each other and the right hands on the keyboard…and you got pure gold.

It helps if you have a crush on Shorter and Hancock. If you have been touched by the former’s Juju, or the latter’s Empyrean Isles you will feel your heart fluttering awake. The mood is pensive, sadly romantic (but in a good way), and always extending the witch’s finger. It doesn’t get better than this, just different and rarely as delicious. 

 - Kenneth Blanchard

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Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants (Prestige, 1956)

Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants was the first Miles Davis record I ever heard. It was a well-played LP in my Dad’s collection that I stumbled upon in my first year of college and for some reason, I decided to spin it. This was almost my first encounter with jazz at all — except some big band stuff in Abbott and Costello movies — and I would find it hard to convey the immediate wonderment I felt listening to Milt Jackson’s opening to “The Man I Love” (take 2).

Milt Jackson’s vibes weren’t the point to that track, and they're not the point to this encomium, but, like the Yellow Brick Road, that opening led me to an extraordinary, life-changing experience. I still wonder why nobody plays vibes like that, and I still wonder what it is about Miles’ non-muted take on the melody that hearing it — and Monk, Red Garland, and Coltrane — was like nothing before or since, for me.

Tutu (Warner Bros., 1986) 

The first new Miles Davis record that came out after hearing that was Tutu. Forty years separate me from that first listen, and thirty years separate Tutu from “The Man I Love.” I still enjoy Tutu quite a lot. All the tunes were written by or with producer/bassist, Marcus Miller — much as all the tunes from Miles’ 2nd quintet were written by Wayne Shorter — but there was no mistaking that Miles led the sessions and that it was Miles Davis music.

I would be lying if I said Tutu was as high in my estimation as the Prestige record, but the things that make Miles' music the ineffable thing it is are present in both cases. There’s a sweetness and melancholy in the ever-present harmon mute. His melodies are treated just so, and his improvisations seem inevitable. Also, possibly because of the space he leaves or the example he sets, he improves every musician he works with (except maybe Monk, but there’s a story behind that). So much time has passed, but this music still fires off my endorphins. Wonderful.

- Gary Chapin

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Ascenseur pour l'échafaud Soundtrack (Fontana, 1958)

Paris is the perfect city to film at night, in black and white, with its streetlights and shadows in soft focus. It’s the perfect city to film beautiful Jeanne Moreau as she walks without direction searching for her missing lover, passing brightly lit cafés and dimly lit alleys, stumbling in a daze through traffic.

And Miles Davis’s plaintive trumpet makes the perfect music to accompany her, the perfect music to furtively whisper “Je t’aime”, the perfect music to commit a murder for love…and the perfect music to get stuck in an elevator while trying to make your escape.

Miles Davis recorded the soundtrack for Louis Malle’s debut film Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator To The Gallows) by improvising while watching the film. It’s a great film in its own right, a terrific blend of noir tropes, and it’s one of the first films of the French New Wave. But it’s the soundtrack that makes it an all-time classic. 

- Richard Blute 

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Sonny Rollins 1930 - 2026

Photo by John Abbott

By Martin Schray

There’s this scene that has gone down in the history of jazz. A tall, almost skinny, Black man playing his saxophone on Williamsburg Bridge in New York. The man was Sonny Rollins and already one of the biggest stars in the jazz world. At the age of 29 he had decided to take a break from playing live and making studio recordings. Rollins had rented a small apartment on Grand Street on Lower East Side, but the walls were paper thin and he couldn’t practice without disturbing the neighbors. One day he walked through Delancey Street, saw the steps up to the bridge and went up. He liked it there, he could play as loud as he wanted, with the Brooklyn-bound subway on one side and traffic on the other. From that moment on the bridge became his daily retreating room of sorts for two years, sometimes for 15 or 16 hours, in any kind of weather. Spring, summer, fall, and winter.

Rollins was a musician whose name stands in one line with the greatest ones of modern jazz - Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. Monk was indeed his teacher and partner, he first almost imitated Monk’s formal musical principles (on Think of One in 1953) before he became his equal partner (on the Thelonious Monk/Sonny Rollins album from 1956, e.g.) and finally emancipated himself with the piano-less trio classic Way Out West. As a consequence of these outstanding and successful albums he was invited to play Carnegie Hall, the accolade for every American musician. But then he realized that all these things didn’t help him to rent an apartment - because he was Black. His response was Freedom Suite in 1958. In the liner notes he wrote: “America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms; its humor; its music. How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.“ Freedom Suite is considered the first instrumental piece that accused racism and discrimination. Rollins however, had to face isolation after the release of the album. That’s why he took the Williamsburg-Bridge-break.

But on a grey November evening in 1961 he wanted to play again. He wanted to pay tribute to Booker Little, a talented young trumpeter, who died at the age of 23. The concert was to be a fundraiser for his widow. Rollins called the concert and the following album The Bridge, it was his comeback. In the 1960s he recorded more excellent albums like Our Man in Jazz (1963), Now’s the Time (1964), East Broadway Run Down (1966) and the soundtrack for the box office hit Alfie(1966). In the musical turmoil of the early Sixties Rollins remained clearly rooted in the jazz tradition, but he helped to pave the road to free jazz. His freest recordings are Our Man In Jazz from 1962, with Don Cherry on trumpet, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Billy Higgins on drums and 1963 Paris Concert with Henry Grimes on bass. Rollins was looking for new ways but he wasn’t as courageous as Ornette or Ayler (which isn’t meant in a negative way, he just wasn’t interested in harmolodics or crassly overblown sounds). The reason why his music cannot be characterized as free jazz has also to do with the rather “traditional“ playing of bass and drums on his compositions (in the end they still played time - again not meant in a negative way). However, it has always been marvelous to listen to him exploring, finding and dropping musical ideas. His saxophone sound is just gigantic, its elegant, deep, very articulate and free flowing, he really was a “saxophone colossus“ (the name of one of his most famous albums). He had a real lust for playing, every new idea he had led to new variations - everything was elaborated with an enormous ease, but he wasn’t interested in showing off. From the 1970s onwards Sonny Rollins tried to find new ways integrating funk, fusion and Latin elements in his music, like on Reel Life (1982). He played with bag piper Rufus Harley at the Berliner Jazztage in 1974 (and the audience booed them), he recorded with ragtime pianist Mary Lou Williams. Moreover, he went to Japan and India and became a buddhist, he discovered yoga and lived in a monastery. As to music he also featured new talents like Branford Marsalis on Falling in Love with Jazz(1989) and Roy Hargrove on Here’s to People (1991). Last but not least, he curated his favorite live recordings, the Road Show Series, which is a bonanza for die hard fans.

However, Sonny Rollins was more than his music. All his life he was a political person, respect and appreciation were very important for him. In an interview with German author Christian Broecking he spoke of himself as a “planetarian“, which is one of the reasons why he released Global Warming (in 1998), a harsh criticism of the US government’s environmental policy. On 9/11/2001 his flat was evacuated, his saxophone was the only thing he took with him. Only a few days later he played a gig in Boston which was to be released as Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert.

Rollins dedicated his music and his life to the fight against injustice and ignorance, and he wanted to express this just by musical means. He believed that music could make a difference. He was a visionary. About his time on the bridge he told the Washington Post in 2011: “I used to blow my horn back at the boats when the boats would blow. All of that was great. I was in a place where nobody could see me. This was heaven.” 

Musically, things had become quiet around him in his final years. Now the last great icon of jazz’s golden age has passed away. The world is a poorer place without him.

Watch him with Don Cherry (tp), Henry Grimes (b) and Billy Higgins (dr) in Rome 1962:

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