The liner notes proclaim it “superb” and “magnificent.”
The jazz charts call it an instant success (considering that it debuted in the Top 10).
And Quincy Jones, its producer and co-star, intones that “God smiled” on it.
Amid all the hype, promotion and self-congratulation, there may be only one nagging little problem with the new CD “Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux,” which was released in video form a few days ago-it’s a musical disaster.
By the time trumpeter Miles Davis went to play the Montreux (Switzerland) Jazz Festival in July 1991-just months before his death in California at age 64-his career, and his artistic contribution, had long since peaked. The addictions, excesses and diseases that had kept him from the stage during various extended periods also had significantly diminished his technical control of his instrument. Worse, the rock posturings of his last years yielded a music that alienated jazz fans by celebrating a variety of pop and funk cliches.
Nevertheless, in the final year of Davis’ life, Jones persuaded the trumpeter to attempt to re-create some of the most technically difficult and aesthetically elusive music of his career. In albums such as “Birth of the Cool,” “Miles Ahead,” “Porgy and Bess” and “Sketches of Spain,” Davis and master arranger Gil Evans had done no less than point jazz in new directions.
The ethereal arrangements, unusual instrumentation (six horns, three rhythm instruments) and coolly understated ambience of the tunes that became “Birth of the Cool” established Davis as a major innovator and inspired other players to develop its simpler, more lyrical musical language.
As Davis himself wrote in “Miles: The Autobiography” (with Quincy Troupe, on Touchstone), ” `Birth of the Cool’ became a collector`s item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird (Charlie Parker) and Dizzy’s (Gillespie’s) music.
“Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren’t a fast listener, you couldn’t catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn’t sweet, and it didn’t have the harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend, trying to get over with a kiss.”
Indeed, Davis and Evans had crafted a music that was sophisticated enough to lure the jazz connoisseur yet accessible enough to seduce the casual listener.
With the subsequent “Miles Ahead,” “Porgy” and “Sketches” albums, Davis and Evans had pushed out the frontier even farther. Here was an orchestral music as harmonically complex and idiomatically conceived as anything by Duke Ellington or Claude Thornhill, its models, but in a musical language unique to Davis and Evans and utterly of the moment.
One can only guess why Davis agreed to attempt playing this intricate music again in Montreux, though it may have had something to do with the aesthetic dead-end to which his rock ventures had led him.
“I saw Miles after the Montreux concert, and he was very excited about playing Gil’s music again,” baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, who collaborated on the “Birth of the Cool” sessions, said last year.
“Playing Gil’s music again made him feel good. In fact, Miles said to me: `This is the first time I’ve thought about good music in 30 years.’ “
But thinking about good music and playing it are two very different things, as Davis must have realized when he arrived at Montreaux, if not sooner. In the new video-documentary of the performance, Jones acknowledges that “the rehearsals were still spotty and touchy,” and he quotes Davis as having said, bluntly, as was his manner, “It’s hard to play.”
Once the live concert begins (and this is the portion of the video that precisely matches the CD), any listener familiar with the original recordings is in for a shock. The exquisite old scores have been placed on the music stands, but neither Davis, nor Jones (the conductor), nor the ensemble (a ghost-band version of the Gil Evans Orchestra combined with the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band) can do them justice.
The first notes are among the most painful, with the combined forces attempting “Boplicity,” one of the most rhythmically swaggering numbers from the “Birth of the Cool” recording. To hear the Montreux band lumbering through the piece, to hear Davis futilely attempting to re-capture the breezy, casual tone of the original is to understand that the project is doomed. Davis can’t play this music anymore, and Jones and the orchestra don’t precisely know how to react.
By the time the musicians have moved on to selections from the “Miles Ahead” album, the gulf between the original and the re-creation clearly is insurmountable. To see Davis turn nervously to trumpeter Wallace Roney for help on “The Duke,” to hear Davis’ wobbling pitch and brazenly wrong notes on “The Maids of Cadiz” is a spectacle at least one Davis fan would rather have been spared.
By the time the “Miles Ahead” tune rolls around, Roney is taking the solos himself, his firm tone and sense of forward motion representing a relief from Davis’ weak, if heroic, attempts.
The subsequent selections from the “Porgy and Bess” and “Sketches of Spain” album fare no better. In “Solea,” the extended tour de force from “Sketches of Spain,” Davis offers some of the crudest, most elliptical playing of his life.
One hastens to note, however, that it’s not simply Davis’ loss of technical facility that mars this music. Many artists have performed eloquently at the end of their careers, none more so than Billie Holiday, whose instrument was ravaged but whose insight into a phrase and a lyric was never greater than at the end.
In turning to a specific repertoire with specific artistic demands, however, Davis and Jones grotesquely distorted the very repertoire they hoped to honor.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of this performance is how successful its marketing and promotion have been. Because of the effusive praise that Jones, Herbie Hancock and others lavish on this performance during the course of the video, uncounted listeners, many hearing Davis for the first time, may believe that this is what the trumpeter really sounded like, that this is what made Davis great.
It’s not. Listen to the “Miles Ahead” album, and you’ll hear how ravishing a tone Davis once was capable of producing on “The Maids of Cadiz,” how effortlessly he could phrase a line on “The Duke.” Listen to the “Birth of the Cool” album, and you’ll hear why its haunting ensemble colors and seamless exchanges between Davis and the band launched a new movement in music.
Of course, many listeners will come to this video and this CD as a sentimental keepsake of one of Davis’ last performances, and that’s understandable. In fact, one of the video’s rare pleasures is the way it fixes a camera lens on one of the more mysterious and elusive figures in modern music.
The video’s clever editing, and its inclusion of lush Montreux scenery, are a constant delight.
In that way, “Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux” ultimately amounts to jazz for the MTV set-designed for the eye, not the ear.
HERE’S THE REAL MILES DAVIS
For those who would like to find out how Davis sounded at his best, following are a few recommendations:
Birth of the Cool (Capitol). Its tracks recorded in 1949 and ’50, the music was not released as an album until 1957. The luster of its arrangements and the ineffably poetic lines of Davis’ muted horn make this an album that crystallized a key moment in jazz history.
Miles Ahead (Columbia). The first of the Miles Davis-Gil Evans orchestral albums, this 1957 album justifies the popular comparisons that have been made between the Davis-Evans approach to sound and Picasso’s approach to canvas.
Porgy and Bess (Columbia). George Gershwin’s landmark opera is redefined in terms of a sweeping jazz orchestra.
For those who prefer their music on video, check out the Vintage Collection: Volume 2 (Jazzmasters), in which Davis and Gil Evans’ big band play “The Duke” and “Orchestral Sketches No. 1 and No. 2” idiomatically, in excerpts from the CBS television special, “The Sound of Jazz.”
