Il Montreal Museum of Fine Arts offre in esclusiva per il Nord America una mostra multimediale dedicata a Miles Davis, denominata We Want Miles: Miles Davis vs. Jazz.
Per l'occasione il sito del Montreal Gazette pubblica uno straordinario articolo, dedicato alla vita ed alla musica di Davis, oltre che presentare questa fantastica mostra.
According to Miles Davis in his scabrous autobiography, when the trumpeter was invited to a White House dinner in 1987, an older woman asked him what he'd done to merit being there. Davis shot back, "Well, I've changed music five or six times." Drum roll, please ...
Davis was hailed as "The Picasso of Jazz," a sobriquet that Nathalie Bondil, director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, appropriated to explain the multimedia exhibition We Want Miles: Miles Davis vs. Jazz, opening on Friday. Like Picasso's, his career was marked by distinct stylistic periods: bebop, cool, hard-bop, orchestral jazz, modal music, jazz-rock, funk and techno-funk.
Famously dubbed the Prince of Darkness, as artist and man, Davis created music worthy of the overused word hypnotic. Nearly 20 years after his death, he continues to put a spell on us.
We Want Miles, exclusive to Montreal in North America, is divided into eight themes, with different gallery spaces reflecting the periods of his career through over 350 items associated with Davis, many of them previously unseen by the general public - photos, films, album covers and artwork (including paintings by Miles), personal effects, instruments, assorted ephemera. And lots of music. The exhibition - assembled by Vincent Bessières, a former editor at Jazzman magazine of Paris, with input from the Montreal International Jazz Festival - was a roaring success during its run at Cité de la Musique in Paris last winter.
If Davis was inspired by some of the greatest 20th-century musicians, from Charlie Parker to Billie Holiday to James Brown, he took pains to be his own man. His music from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s remains evergreen, much of it visionary. So much so that when he faltered in the 1980s, the last full decade of his tumultuous life, he continued to fascinate.
Bessières has claimed that "over and above jazz and even music, Davis's appetite for renewal remains an example for artists in every other field. ... He continues to elude and provoke debate between those fascinated with his ability to transform himself and those who see him as a musical opportunist." (Actually, both camps are right.) Bessières says Davis renewed himself about every five years. "This is not a lot of time; five years can go by very quickly, and each change involved enormous risk. Before embarking on this exhibition, I had definitely not gauged the speed at which Davis's art changed. Now I admire him all the more."
Charisma was his calling card. True, charisma was also the providence of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Chet Baker and Keith Jarrett. But no one was as enigmatic as Miles. His interviews were often outrageously arrogant, contentious, infuriating, yet just as often perceptive, generous, witty, wise. He was the purveyor of rope-a-dope before Muhammad Ali, the oblique put-on before Andy Warhol.
Above all, he was almost always controversial.
Early on, critics claimed he didn't have the technical chops of, say, Dizzy Gillespie - Miles was the first to admit it - but his cool style cast the longest shadow on trumpet players, and all jazz musicians, to follow; there's no escaping him. He had a tone that was purely his, whether open-horned clarion calls or nuance-filled murmurs on his Harmon mute. His sound was sparse, lean, lyric, timeless; he suggested rather than emphasized.
Yet Kind of Blue, which remains the album that has turned on more people to jazz than any other, initially garnered a lukewarm response. As the most romantic piece of jazz music (soundtrack for countless seductions), and a revolutionary "modal" concept album analyzed endlessly by theorists, it became the perennial bestseller in jazz history.
Born in 1926, the son of a prosperous middle-class family - his father was a prominent dentist in East St. Louis - he seemed imbued with a sense of entitlement. (Free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman, a rival for fame whom Davis dissed in 1959, claimed Davis was a black man who lived like a white.) He was always the fanciest dresser, on the cutting-edge of style, whether in sharply cut Italian suits or extravagant psychedelic-funk finery (tight bell-bottoms and flowing scarves). He was the most photogenic of jazz artists - and he knew it; looking in the mirror one night before a gig early in his career, he said he felt so "clean" that he forgot to take his trumpet. In this respect, the exhibition's photos double as a history of fashion; his hairstyles went from slick conk to neat natural to full-blown Afro to permed curls.
He infuriated critics by often playing with his back turned to audiences, rarely acknowledging them, sometimes leaving the stage when his musicians took solos.
His pride of race was a precursor to Black Power, and he was hassled by police for enjoying the perks (luxury cars, glamorous women) normally reserved for white stars. (A collage of newspaper headlines after he was beaten by New York City cops, while smoking a cigarette outside a club between sets in 1959, is a chilling reminder.) Yet he welcomed whites he deemed worthy, catching flack from blacks in 1958 for hiring pianist Bill Evans. His association with Canadian-born arranger Gil Evans was one of the most fertile collaborations in jazz history.
He had a great ear for talent. Among the musicians he hired who became stars, largely due to their exposure in his bands, are (in rough chronology) Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Ron Carter, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett, Jack de Johnette, Dave Holland, David Liebman, Kenny Garrett and Marcus Miller. He often communicated with musicians wordlessly, often with just a nod, a point of his finger.
British bassist Holland, an unknown when Miles hired him in 1968 for his excursion into jazz-rock, told Davis biographer Ian Carr: "It was almost like a haiku thing - or a Zen thing where the master says a couple of words and the student gets enlightened." The advice included, "Don't play what's there. Play what's not there ... Don't play what you go for. Play the next thing."
For many, like myself, Davis's rock excursions represented an avenue into jazz history. André Menard, co-founder of the Montreal festival, recalled this week: "In college we heard Bitches Brew the way we heard a rock record, and that triggered our interest in jazz as a whole."
While he had desultory results reaching the black masses, Davis was the principal inspiration behind the cerebral coming-of-age of European jazz.
Photos of Davis flirting with Juliette Greco and Jeanne Moreau recall his riveting effect on post-war French jazz lovers. Boris Vian, renaissance man of the Left Bank, offered readers a nonpareil description of young Davis's approach upon his 1949 Paris debut: "The first thing that strikes you about Miles Davis is that he's really beautiful to look at. ... His articulation is absolutely flabbergasting. The spaces which suddenly appear in the middle of sinuous lines serve to relax (physically) and excite (intellectually) at the same time." His sound was "nude, vulnerable, almost no vibrato, totally calm ... a monk's sound - somebody who is part of this century but who can look at it with serenity.".....
Per leggere il resto dell'articolo visita questo indirizzo.
Per l'occasione il sito del Montreal Gazette pubblica uno straordinario articolo, dedicato alla vita ed alla musica di Davis, oltre che presentare questa fantastica mostra.
According to Miles Davis in his scabrous autobiography, when the trumpeter was invited to a White House dinner in 1987, an older woman asked him what he'd done to merit being there. Davis shot back, "Well, I've changed music five or six times." Drum roll, please ...
Davis was hailed as "The Picasso of Jazz," a sobriquet that Nathalie Bondil, director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, appropriated to explain the multimedia exhibition We Want Miles: Miles Davis vs. Jazz, opening on Friday. Like Picasso's, his career was marked by distinct stylistic periods: bebop, cool, hard-bop, orchestral jazz, modal music, jazz-rock, funk and techno-funk.
Famously dubbed the Prince of Darkness, as artist and man, Davis created music worthy of the overused word hypnotic. Nearly 20 years after his death, he continues to put a spell on us.
We Want Miles, exclusive to Montreal in North America, is divided into eight themes, with different gallery spaces reflecting the periods of his career through over 350 items associated with Davis, many of them previously unseen by the general public - photos, films, album covers and artwork (including paintings by Miles), personal effects, instruments, assorted ephemera. And lots of music. The exhibition - assembled by Vincent Bessières, a former editor at Jazzman magazine of Paris, with input from the Montreal International Jazz Festival - was a roaring success during its run at Cité de la Musique in Paris last winter.
If Davis was inspired by some of the greatest 20th-century musicians, from Charlie Parker to Billie Holiday to James Brown, he took pains to be his own man. His music from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s remains evergreen, much of it visionary. So much so that when he faltered in the 1980s, the last full decade of his tumultuous life, he continued to fascinate.
Bessières has claimed that "over and above jazz and even music, Davis's appetite for renewal remains an example for artists in every other field. ... He continues to elude and provoke debate between those fascinated with his ability to transform himself and those who see him as a musical opportunist." (Actually, both camps are right.) Bessières says Davis renewed himself about every five years. "This is not a lot of time; five years can go by very quickly, and each change involved enormous risk. Before embarking on this exhibition, I had definitely not gauged the speed at which Davis's art changed. Now I admire him all the more."
Charisma was his calling card. True, charisma was also the providence of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Chet Baker and Keith Jarrett. But no one was as enigmatic as Miles. His interviews were often outrageously arrogant, contentious, infuriating, yet just as often perceptive, generous, witty, wise. He was the purveyor of rope-a-dope before Muhammad Ali, the oblique put-on before Andy Warhol.
Above all, he was almost always controversial.
Early on, critics claimed he didn't have the technical chops of, say, Dizzy Gillespie - Miles was the first to admit it - but his cool style cast the longest shadow on trumpet players, and all jazz musicians, to follow; there's no escaping him. He had a tone that was purely his, whether open-horned clarion calls or nuance-filled murmurs on his Harmon mute. His sound was sparse, lean, lyric, timeless; he suggested rather than emphasized.
Yet Kind of Blue, which remains the album that has turned on more people to jazz than any other, initially garnered a lukewarm response. As the most romantic piece of jazz music (soundtrack for countless seductions), and a revolutionary "modal" concept album analyzed endlessly by theorists, it became the perennial bestseller in jazz history.
Born in 1926, the son of a prosperous middle-class family - his father was a prominent dentist in East St. Louis - he seemed imbued with a sense of entitlement. (Free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman, a rival for fame whom Davis dissed in 1959, claimed Davis was a black man who lived like a white.) He was always the fanciest dresser, on the cutting-edge of style, whether in sharply cut Italian suits or extravagant psychedelic-funk finery (tight bell-bottoms and flowing scarves). He was the most photogenic of jazz artists - and he knew it; looking in the mirror one night before a gig early in his career, he said he felt so "clean" that he forgot to take his trumpet. In this respect, the exhibition's photos double as a history of fashion; his hairstyles went from slick conk to neat natural to full-blown Afro to permed curls.
He infuriated critics by often playing with his back turned to audiences, rarely acknowledging them, sometimes leaving the stage when his musicians took solos.
His pride of race was a precursor to Black Power, and he was hassled by police for enjoying the perks (luxury cars, glamorous women) normally reserved for white stars. (A collage of newspaper headlines after he was beaten by New York City cops, while smoking a cigarette outside a club between sets in 1959, is a chilling reminder.) Yet he welcomed whites he deemed worthy, catching flack from blacks in 1958 for hiring pianist Bill Evans. His association with Canadian-born arranger Gil Evans was one of the most fertile collaborations in jazz history.
He had a great ear for talent. Among the musicians he hired who became stars, largely due to their exposure in his bands, are (in rough chronology) Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Ron Carter, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett, Jack de Johnette, Dave Holland, David Liebman, Kenny Garrett and Marcus Miller. He often communicated with musicians wordlessly, often with just a nod, a point of his finger.
British bassist Holland, an unknown when Miles hired him in 1968 for his excursion into jazz-rock, told Davis biographer Ian Carr: "It was almost like a haiku thing - or a Zen thing where the master says a couple of words and the student gets enlightened." The advice included, "Don't play what's there. Play what's not there ... Don't play what you go for. Play the next thing."
For many, like myself, Davis's rock excursions represented an avenue into jazz history. André Menard, co-founder of the Montreal festival, recalled this week: "In college we heard Bitches Brew the way we heard a rock record, and that triggered our interest in jazz as a whole."
While he had desultory results reaching the black masses, Davis was the principal inspiration behind the cerebral coming-of-age of European jazz.
Photos of Davis flirting with Juliette Greco and Jeanne Moreau recall his riveting effect on post-war French jazz lovers. Boris Vian, renaissance man of the Left Bank, offered readers a nonpareil description of young Davis's approach upon his 1949 Paris debut: "The first thing that strikes you about Miles Davis is that he's really beautiful to look at. ... His articulation is absolutely flabbergasting. The spaces which suddenly appear in the middle of sinuous lines serve to relax (physically) and excite (intellectually) at the same time." His sound was "nude, vulnerable, almost no vibrato, totally calm ... a monk's sound - somebody who is part of this century but who can look at it with serenity.".....
Per leggere il resto dell'articolo visita questo indirizzo.
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