For several years, I woke up to the same exact sounds almost every single morning: the first few notes of “Concierto de Aranjuez” from Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, emanating from the tinny speakers (or is that speaker?) in my alarm clock/CD player.  The only reason I don’t still wake up the same way, in fact, is that my son gets me up without the need for an alarm clock. I love his morning coo-coo sounds, don’t get me wrong—but there are some days when I wish I could go back. I’m just too sleep-deprived, however, to do it.
If you know the song, I hope you’ll agree it’s a beautiful way to begin the day: a gently percussive beginning followed, a few beats later, by a grand pronouncement of horns. It’s almost the equivalent of the soft shake of the shoulder, then the curtains being thrown open to the sun. If you don’t know it, click the song title above to hear the first thirty seconds, if you like… though your appetite may be whetted for the rest.
If all you knew of Miles Davis’ work was Sketches of Spain, however, you’d be seriously misled about him. The same artist who made that music also made, a year earlier, Kind of Blue, which couldn’t be any more different. In fact, you can almost choose any two albums from his expansive discography and readily find differences between them. The only thing that unites them is their inventiveness. Rather than limit himself to one style or genre of music, Miles Davis mastered the genres that helped him express his artistic vision. He was, in that respect as in many others, an absolute genius.
People resented him in the same way they resented Bob Dylan for picking up an electric guitar after years of playing acoustic. How dare he demand that we redefine him in our minds? Since I came to his music late in the game, however, I’ve always known him as a master of many modes, so I didn’t have to experience the herky-jerk of getting accustomed to one Miles Davis, then having to learn another. It ALL seems like Miles Davis to me. Â Miles Davis isn’t a style, he’s a mind. In that he reminds me of Picasso.
I find great inspiration in that approach. My own work as a playwright has been diverse in the same way. (I’m not claiming quality here, mind you, merely a tendency to wander from aesthetic approach to aesthetic approach.) Â The Pirandellian style I used in LET X, for example, is radically different than the realism of THE TREEHOUSE and the abstract symbolism of CRACKED. In the end, for me, the style of a work needs to emerge from the demands of its subject matter. If I wrote in the same style every time, furthermore, I’d feel like I was imitating myself, and limiting myself: a playwright needs to be free.
So thank you, Miles Davis, not only for waking me up, but for giving me a model to emulate. I really appreciate it.
One of my favorite Miles Davis albums is Doo-Bop–a gorgeous blend of jazz and hip-hop. It’s another round of Davis throwing any idea of the style he should have right out the window. I do love Sketches of Spain for its flat-out drama, though.
It IS dramatic, isn’t it? I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, oddly enough, but it’s so straightforwardly emotional. Now it seems obvious!
I firmly believe that all theatre artists need to keep that same flexibility in mind when it comes to creating work. Trust yourself. See where a “riff” will take you and, subsequently, others as well.
BTW, one of the first performances I saw at the Kennedy Center was a ballet company dancing Porgy and Bess using the Miles Davis version. Amazing.
Wow, would I have ever loved to see that performance…
There’s a way that jazz musicians trust each other, live and in the moment, that I always thought was similar to the way in which actors need to trust each other, save for the fact that more improvisation is expected.
Glad to have inspired you, TRB!
Wow, Gwydion, accept my apologies for not weighing in on this sooner – wouldn’t want my hard-earned double cred as a theater artist and jazz musician to go to waste! I had the chance to play those marvelous Gil Evans arrangements when I was at Eastman (conducted by the great bandleader/arranger Maria Schneider, no less!) and will never forget playing the Miles solo part over that gorgeous accompaniment to “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.” Perhaps because “Porgy & Bess” was one of the first jazz albums I ever owned, “Sketches of Spain” didn’t make as big of an impression on me, but I love it now for its intense, brooding quality. The Miles & Gil box set is amazing, hearing all the outtakes and rehearsal flubs as well. Miles was mistake-prone, but even in his mistakes there’s the sound of something urgent. (And I love that famous Ira Gitler description of Miles’s sound: “Like a man walking on eggshells.”)
So I’m so glad you wrote about Miles and his polystylism, which for me is one of the most intense examples of an artist grappling with the whims of his own voice, and not being afraid to take the unsafe choice if it promises the potential of a big payoff. Unlike jax, I actually don’t think “Doo Wop” hasn’t aged well, even if it was one of my introductions to Miles, but when Miles whiffed he whiffed big, and in a way that was a thorn in the side of the corporate music structure which continually tried, unsuccessfully, to pin him down. Contrast this approach to art-making with the safe, packaged presentations of jazz which comes out of the large cultural institutions (Lincoln Center is the most obvious) – everyone gets dressed up and all the musicians are swinging, but where’s that longing and seeking for “something new” that jazz ALWAYS had, at least until the so-called “Young Lion” neo-conservatives (Wynton, etc.) moved in during the 1980s and attempted to negate what they saw as Miles’s “impure” experiments with rock and hip-hop. (Of course Wynton may have had a bone to pick with Miles ever since that time when, as a teenager, he walked on stage uninvited and Miles said something to the effect of “Kid, get the f*ck off the stage!”)
Keith Jarrett writes brilliantly about this dynamic – that the media representations of jazz bear almost zero relationship with the actual reality of players grappling with the search for an original inner voice. Like Jarrett, I turn to Emerson on this as well – Jarrett quotes RWE’s line “Do your work and I shall know you” in an infamous piece for the NY Times which he posted after Miles’s death in 1991. This piece (“Categories Aplenty, But Where’s the Music?”) strangely doesn’t exist online at last check; I may transcribe it for my blog soon.
All food for thought and I think the connection to theater artists and a playwright’s search for a voice is an absolutely relevant one. It’s rare I get to publicly ponder my deep loves for both of these worlds, so thanks for stirring the pot a bit! Now I’m gonna go put on that box set…
Jason, I knew you were going to have a lot to say on this subject… how terrific that you’ve been so incredibly eloquent on the subject!
I agree with you that for me, the essence of Miles is the longing and the search. He’s not perfect — he makes mistakes — and that’s very much part of what I love about him. He’s the irrepressible need to express whatever’s top of mind, urgently and with anxiety and passion, categorization be damned. That’s how I always, always want to write.