Live At Montreux
Miles Davis & Quincy Jones
Miles Davis & Quincy Jones’s Live at Montreux (often titled Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux) documents a historic 1991 concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival where Davis, for the first time, agreed to revisit the orchestral music he had created with arranger Gil Evans in the 1950s and 1960s. Recorded on July 8, 1991 and released in 1993, the album places Miles in front of two large ensembles—the Gil Evans Orchestra and the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band—conducted by Quincy Jones, performing suites from Birth of the Cool, Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain. The set moves through “Boplicity,” a Miles Ahead medley (“Springsville,” “Maids of Cadiz,” “The Duke,” “My Ship”), “Summertime,” “Orgone/Gone,” “Here Come de Honey Man,” “The Pan Piper,” “Solea,” and more, with introductions by Claude Nobs and Jones framing the evening as “The Event.”
Musically, the album is less about virtuosic trumpet fireworks and more about seeing an older Miles step back into the lush, complex orchestrations that helped define his earlier career. Seriously ill and just months from his death, Davis plays in short, emotionally charged bursts, sometimes handing lines off to younger trumpeter Wallace Roney and alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett when he tires, then returning with piercing, fragile statements—particularly on “Boplicity” and “The Pan Piper.” Jones and arranger Gil Goldstein refit Evans’s original charts for the combined orchestras, giving the music a thick, sometimes exaggerated sonic mass that is balanced by the audience’s clear sense that they are witnessing something unrepeatable.
Live At Montreux
Miles Davis & Quincy Jones
Miles Davis & Quincy Jones’s Live at Montreux (often titled Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux) documents a historic 1991 concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival where Davis, for the first time, agreed to revisit the orchestral music he had created with arranger Gil Evans in the 1950s and 1960s. Recorded on July 8, 1991 and released in 1993, the album places Miles in front of two large ensembles—the Gil Evans Orchestra and the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band—conducted by Quincy Jones, performing suites from Birth of the Cool, Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain. The set moves through “Boplicity,” a Miles Ahead medley (“Springsville,” “Maids of Cadiz,” “The Duke,” “My Ship”), “Summertime,” “Orgone/Gone,” “Here Come de Honey Man,” “The Pan Piper,” “Solea,” and more, with introductions by Claude Nobs and Jones framing the evening as “The Event.”
Musically, the album is less about virtuosic trumpet fireworks and more about seeing an older Miles step back into the lush, complex orchestrations that helped define his earlier career. Seriously ill and just months from his death, Davis plays in short, emotionally charged bursts, sometimes handing lines off to younger trumpeter Wallace Roney and alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett when he tires, then returning with piercing, fragile statements—particularly on “Boplicity” and “The Pan Piper.” Jones and arranger Gil Goldstein refit Evans’s original charts for the combined orchestras, giving the music a thick, sometimes exaggerated sonic mass that is balanced by the audience’s clear sense that they are witnessing something unrepeatable.