Miles Davis Silent Sessions

Various Artists - Miles From India (2008) {2CD Set Times Square Records TSQ-CD-1808, Miles Davis alumni}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 714 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 292 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 15 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2008 Four Quarters Ent. / Times Square Records | TSQ-CD-1808
Jazz / Fusion / Post Bop / Jazz Funk / Modal Music

Mixing the music of jazz icon Miles Davis with sounds and instruments from India, as producers Bob Belden and Yusuf Gandhi did on Miles from India, was far from an outrageous proposition. Davis set the precedent himself — not only with his use of Indian players like the tabla virtuoso Badal Roy in sessions issued on albums like Big Fun and Get Up with It, but also with his sinuous modal compositions stretching back to 1959's epochal Kind of Blue and continuing through his electric period of the '70s.

The Classic Prestige Sessions 1951-1956 collects all of the sides recorded by trumpeter Miles Davis and tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins for Prestige during their time together as young players in New York City. Both musicians were just past their formative years during this period, having broken free from the heavy sway of their bop elders – especially alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, who appears here in several classic cuts originally released on Collector's Items. Both Davis and Rollins were expanding the bop mold and beginning to discover their own sound. Davis had already made his mark with the innovative West Coast jazz masterpiece Birth of the Cool and was further developing his romantic and cerebral minimalism. Similarly, Rollins was quickly becoming the heir to Parker's throne as the most searching and muscular saxophonist on the scene. The dichotomy of their sounds made Davis and Rollins a perfect rub as jazz partners and these recordings helped foreshadow and define such future jazz movements as hard bop, post-bop, and even free jazz.

Miles Davis - '58 Sessions Featuring Stella By Starlight (1958)
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC+CUE+LOG -> 366 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 146 Mb
Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 2 Mb (web)
© 1994 Sony Music / Columbia | 467918 2
Jazz / Bop / Cool / Hard Bop

This compilation somewhat erratically distills the contents of two very different releases featuring the 1958 Miles Davis Sextet. The first four tracks were originally issued as one side of a short-lived album entitled Jazz Track. On this disc, that same May 1958 studio session is augmented by three numbers from Jazz at the Plaza. The live session was held in the Persian Room of The Plaza Hotel in New York City on September 9, 1958. The spontaneous and complimentary style of performance ethic and trust among Davis and his musicians is at the fundamental core of his work here. This memorable sextet features: Davis (trumpet), Julian "Cannonball" Adderley (alto sax), John Coltrane (tenor sax), Bill Evans (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Jimmy Cobb (drums).

Recording sessions for tracks that appear on this album took place on May 26, 1958, at Columbia's 30th Street Studio and September 9, 1958, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The sessions for tracks on the album in mid-1958, along with the Milestones sessions from earlier that year, were seen by many music writers as elemental in Miles Davis' transition from bebop to the modal style of jazz and were viewed as precursors to his best-known work, Kind of Blue.

Workin' is the third in a series of four featuring the classic Miles Davis Quintet: Davis (trumpet), John Coltrane (tenor sax), Red Garland (piano), and Philly Joe Jones (drums). Like its predecessors Cookin' and Relaxin', Workin' is the product of not one – as mythology would claim – but two massively productive recording sessions in May and October of 1956, respectively…