Miles and Gil

A new set revisits one of jazz's great collaborations

by Jon Garelick

The six-CD Miles Davis/Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings (Columbia) is the hottest "new" jazz release of the season. It includes the classic Davis/Evans jazz orchestra collaborations Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958), and Sketches of Spain (1960), plus the problematic Quiet Nights (1962). The historical importance of these recordings, and the pleasures they offer, is undeniable. The set also includes more than 50 percent previously unreleased material -- alternate takes, rehearsal takes, rehearsal chatter, and a few other odds and ends. For the jazz scholar, and for lucky critics who have been sent free promotional copies, the set is invaluable. But at $100 a pop (on sale for $83 at one local store where we checked), the jazz fan will want to know whether it's worth it.

These albums continued the work Evans had begun with the Claude Thornhill orchestra and then with Davis and Gerry Mulligan in the 1949-'50 Birth of the Cool nonet sessions -- a big, airy sound that emphasized mid-range brass and light reeds and was filled out with French horn and tuba. The original subtitle of Miles Ahead was "Miles Davis + 19," not the 16-piece unit that was standard in the swing era. Parts evolved in complex thematic juxtapositions. Listening to the three centerpiece albums of the new set, you're tempted to allow only Ellington as Evans's equal in jazz orchestration, in mastery of color and texture.

Porgy and Bess (adapted from the Gershwin opera) and Sketches of Spain (with Evans's scoring of Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez) are brilliant settings for Miles's trumpet -- concertos in which he spars with the band and becomes an actor immersed in several roles. He's male ("Bess, You Is My Woman Now") and female ("My Man's Gone Now"). In Evans's beautiful "Saeta" section of Spain, which is based on an Andalusian form of religious folk song, Miles is a woman singing about the Passion of Christ as part of a sacred processional. His half-valved sobs and his high-note cries are stunning. And the rigorous recording took its toll. "After we finished working on Sketches of Spain I didn't have nothing inside me," Miles wrote in his Autobiography. "I was drained of all emotion and I didn't want to hear that music after I got through playing all that hard shit."

Both Porgy and Sketches of Spain are stunning pieces of work, but on re-listening, Miles Ahead has emerged as my favorite. Maybe that's because it's the most consistently jazz-like; the music is springy, buoyant, from Miles's first syncopated a cappella phrases right into Art Taylor's ride-cymbal eighth notes, clicking away on top of the mix, and the steady throb of Paul Chambers's bass underneath.

What's more, the restoration of these old tapes is a revelation. The album has gone through all manner of remixes and reissues. An early experiment in stereo (and in overdubbing), it was nonetheless originally released in mono and has never before received a full-stereo treatment. This may be the first "true" Miles Ahead, finally realized, 39 years later, as it was first conceived. You can hear the damage in the old master tapes, slight dropouts, splices, even that much-dreaded bugaboo of the CD-era, tape hiss. But it doesn't matter. For the first time we can hear the breadth of Evans's tonal palette.

On "Blues for Pablo," whole choirs of woodwinds and brass open up behind Davis. Each of the 19 instruments feels individually audible, spread across a soundstage from left to right, from the highest flute to the deepest warbling of Danny Banks's bass clarinet, with Miles in the middle, a lyric, swinging protagonist. Countermelodies weave through the ensemble and yet the whole blends. One is able to see foreground and background in a single, focused vision. Maybe the piece is about Picasso. Word is that Columbia plans to reissue the restored Miles Ahead as a separate album. It's worth holding out for if you don't have the money for the box.

The fourth album of the original series, the bossa nova experiment Quiet Nights, doesn't have the suite-like unity of the original Columbia collaborations, and the music itself isn't up to Miles's lyric insight (he later disowned it). The Quiet Nights disc is rounded out by the previously unreleased theater music "The Time of the Barracudas." This 12-minute suite, with Tony Williams's insistent martial drum rhythm and Herbie Hancock's out-of-tempo piano exclamations, looks forward to Mile's late-'60s electric band, and the four takes of the 1968 "Falling Water" are just that -- an unsuccessful attempt at what Miles did better on In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew.

On the other hand, I found the alternate and rehearsal takes of the three major pieces and, yes, the studio chatter surprisingly satisfying. Here's Miles asking for a playback, or flubbing every single run as he plays through a rehearsal with the ensemble. Here's Gil Evans instructing the band on how to accent a phrase and then, as the brass players freely try it out, saying impatiently, "All right, all right. You can do it in your head, for heaven's sake!" Slowly, take after take, a masterpiece is assembled. It's a rare glimpse into the processes of art. Is the box worth it? Well, if you can't afford it, borrow it from a friend for a week. Or maybe a month. Or two.

Miles Davis/Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings is also available as an 11-LP vinyl set from Mosaic Records. Call 203-327-7111.