Legacy continues its Miles campaign with Sketches of Spain (Legacy Edition) celebrating the 50th anniversary of the trumpeter’s extraordinary collaboration with Gil Evans. When it was released in 1960, it was so different that many critics simply didn’t know what to make of it. When confronted with the question is it jazz? Miles answered, “It’s music, and I like it.” The finished results were ultimately hailed as a masterpiece, creating a hypnotic ‘possessed’ effect, and brought to a fitting climax the period of intense creativity that had begun in 1954.
Each of the four orchestral album collaborations with self-taught arranger-composer Gil Evans – Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy And Bess (1958), Sketches of Spain (1959), and Quiet Nights (1962) – is a masterwork in its own right. Sketches was Miles’s first post-Kind Of Blue project, and retains that LP’s modal feel on the 16-minute version of Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,’ the inspiration for Davis and Evans. Miles Davis – the great improvising soloist. Gil Evans – the great orchestrator. Sketches was the album with which Davis closed the old decade and opened up the new one.
Sketches of Spain (Legacy Edition) includes on 2 CDs what is unanimously regarded as powerful and lasting music, music that represents a compelling blend of the “deep song” of flamenco and the cry of the blues.
This set includes:
* Over two hours of music. The original album along with rehearsal and alternate takes previously heard only on the 1996 set Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, plus the only piece ever performed live by Miles with Gil – “Concierto de Aranjuez” performed at Carnegie Hall on May 19, 1961.
* Bonus digital booklet with Rare photos, session records with Teo Macero’s producer notes and clippings including the 1960 Hi Fi/Stereo Review article by Nat Hentoff describing the Nov. 15, 1959 recording session.
* New liner notes for this 2009 edition are written by composer/academician Gunther Schuller, whose hundreds of accomplishments in jazz include playing french horn for Miles on the 1949-50 Birth Of The Cool sessions, and recording with Miles and Gil on the 1958 masterpiece, Porgy and Bess.
DISC 1
CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO) 16:20
WILL O’ THE WISP 3:48
THE PAN PIPER 3:55
SAETA 4:59
SOLEA (12:17)
SONG OF OUR COUNTRY (3:20)
DISC 2
1 MAIDS OF CADIZ (3:47)
2 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[REHEARSAL TAKE, INCOMPLETE, W/O MILES DAVIS] (7:23)
3 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[ALTERNATE TAKE, PART ONE] (12:06)
4 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[ALTERNATE TAKE, PART TWO] (3:34)
5 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[ALTERNATE ENDING] (1:04)
6 THE PAN PIPER [TAKE 1] (3:12)
7 SONG OF OUR COUNTRY [TAKE 9, W/O INTRO] (3:00)
8 SONG OF OUR COUNTRY
[TAKE 14, SLOWER TEMPO, W/O INTRO] (3:11)
9 SAETA [FULL VERSION OF MASTER] (6:03)
10 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO) [LIVE] (17:07)
11 TEO (9:34)
Also this week, the Ig-uana returns with something more than a little different:
Preliminaires is out this week (UK/Europe) and next Tuesday (US).
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