The studio recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet, 1965-68 / Keith Waters.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Waters, Keith, 1958-

Series:

Oxford studies in recorded jazz

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Davis, Miles--Criticism and interpretation.

Davis, Miles.

Jazz--1961-1970--History and criticism.

Jazz.

Miles Davis Quintet--Discography.

Miles Davis Quintet.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Discographies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 302 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Summary:

The influence of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," consisting of Davis (trumpet), Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Tony Williams (drums) continues to resonate. Jazz musicians, historians, and critics have celebrated the group for itsimprovisational communication, openness, and its transitional status between hard bop and the emerging free jazz of the 1960s, creating a synthesis described by one quintet member as "controlled freedom." The book provides a critical analytical study of the Davis quintet studio recordings releasedbetween 1965-68, including E.S.P., Miles Smiles, Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky, and Filles de Kilimanjaro. In contrast to the quintet's live recordings, which included performances of older jazz standards, the studio recordings offered an astonishing breadth of original compositions. Many ofthese compositions have since become jazz standards, and all of them played a central role in the development of contemporary jazz composition. Using transcription and analysis, author Keith Waters illuminates the compositional, improvisational, and collective achievements of the group. With additional sources, such as rehearsal takes, alternate takes, session reels, and copyright deposits of lead sheets, he shows how the group in thestudio shaped and altered features of the compositions. Despite the earlier hard bop orientation of the players, the Davis quintet compositions offered different responses to questions of form, melody, and harmonic structure, and they often invited other improvisational paths, ones that relied on anuncanny degree of collective rapport. And given the spontaneity of the recorded performances-often undertaken with a minimum of rehearsal-the players responded with any number of techniques to address formal, harmonic, or metrical discrepancies that arose while the tape was rolling. The book provides an invaluable resource for those interested in Davis and his sidemen, as well as in jazz of the 1960s. It serves as a reference for jazz musicians and educators, with detailed transcriptions and commentary on compositions and improvisations heard on the studio recordings.

Contents:

The Quintet

Analytical strategies

E.S.P.

Miles smiles

Sorcerer

Nefertiti

Miles in the sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro

The Quintet and Its legacies.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references, discography, and index.

ISBN:

9780195393835

019539383X

9780195393842

0195393848

OCLC:

624048570