Producer Bob Belden has turned reinventing the music of Miles Davis into a cottage industry, taking Davis to India for 2008’s Miles from India, and more recently Belden has given us Asiento, which re-imagined Bitches Brew as a slice of electronica. Now he gives us Miles Español, which finds Belden pairing veterans of Davis' various bands with musicians from Spain, Morocco, and Latin America on classic tracks from Davis' Sketches of Spain and Kind of Blue albums. Hearing Davis compositions with oud, bassoon, accordion, and bongos is certainly exotic and interesting, but one longs for the elegant, stately grace of the original albums.
Sketches of Spain is an album by Miles Davis, recorded between November 1959 and March 1960 at the Columbia 30th Street Studio in New York City. An extended version of the second movement of Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez is included, as well as a song called "Will o' the Wisp", from the ballet El amor brujo by Manuel de Falla. Sketches of Spain is regarded as an exemplary recording of Third Stream, a musical fusion of jazz, European classical, and styles of world music.
Along with Kind of Blue, In a Silent Way, and Round About Midnight, Sketches of Spain is one of Miles Davis' most enduring and innovative achievements. Recorded between November 1959 and March 1960 – after Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley had left the band – Davis teamed with Canadian arranger Gil Evans for the third time. Davis brought Evans the album's signature piece, "Concierto de Aranjuez," after hearing a classical version of it at bassist Joe Mondragon's house. Evans was as taken with it as Davis was, and set about to create an entire album of material around it. The result is a masterpiece of modern art.
The crown jewel of the epic Evans/Davis triptych that began with MILES AHEAD and PORGY AND BESS, SKETCHES OF SPAIN is as emotionally compelling as any performance in the trumpeter's remarkable body of works. Combining as it does the emotional gravity of two cultures–the deep song of flamenco music and the rich lament of the blues–SKETCHES OF SPAIN is a musical hybrid of enormous power and beauty. Gil Evans' immense canvas of orchestral colors inspires some of Davis' most deeply felt solo flights. He paints vast vistas of velvety, shimmering night sounds, and through it all runs the mountainous backbone of Spain's native rhythms and chants.
A beautiful collaboration between Miles Davis and the great Gil Evans – and perhaps the most perfectly realized of all their projects! The album's got a wonderfully unified feel – as it begins with long compositions that have a distinct Spanish-tinge (and not a Latin-tinge, which is an important distinction to the way the album progresses.) Evans' arrangements have a majesty that takes the songs to the next level – working them as lush, lively backings for Davis' equally majestic trumpet solos, some of the finest he ever recorded with large group backing. Wonderful all the way through – and with the tracks "Concierto De Aranjuez", "Saeta", "The Pan Piper", and "Solea".
As most readers familiar with Miles Davis' music will know, `Sketches of Spain' recorded in 1959-60 was his third and final collaborative project with orchestral arranger Gil Evans. The original album release, distilled from the recording sessions, explored the musical styles of the Iberian Peninsula and has a distinctive feel quite different from Miles' other work: listeners familiar with classical music who never previously connected with jazz often found SoS to be an accessible gateway to other innovative jazz compositions of the era.
Along with Kind of Blue, In a Silent Way, and Round About Midnight, Sketches of Spain is one of Miles Davis' most enduring and innovative achievements. Recorded between November 1959 and March 1960 - after Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley had left the band - Davis teamed with Canadian arranger Gil Evans for the third time. Davis brought Evans the album's signature piece, "Concierto de Aranjuez," after hearing a classical version of it at bassist Joe Mondragon's house. Evans was as taken with it as Davis was, and set about to create an entire album of material around it. The result is a masterpiece of modern art. On the "Concierto," Evans' arrangement provided an orchestra and jazz band - Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, and Elvin Jones - the opportunity to record a classical work as it was…