Miles Davis

Summary

Dominique Pagani discusses Miles Davis mainly in his sessions on music. He counts him among the jazzmen who enrich the chords of the blues1 and associates him with cool, which emerged in a period of innovation in jazz. In his view, unable to push pyrotechnics any further, Davis creates cool through feeling and tone, and this aesthetic answers to the rise of new African-American middle classes2. He sees So What, on Kind of Blue, as the first modal piece3. He also stresses Davis's genius for discovering future great musicians such as Coltrane, Bill Evans and Tony Williams, and on this point compares him to Karajan4, while noting his irritation when too much interest went to his sideman. He returns several times to Les Feuilles mortes: he says it was out of love for Juliette Gréco that Davis made it a standard5. In Autumn Leaves, recorded with Cannonball Adderley, he points to a calculated wrong note that thwarts the expectation of the tonic6.

1. 1#5 Libertarian liberalism, libidinal consumption and music…27 Sept 2014 · 21:00
2. 2John Lewis: classical or jazz?29 Jun 2022 · 14:10
3. 3#11 Modal and tonal music24 Jan 2021 · 1:44:54
4. 4Wagner and his interpreters, approaching Clouscard, Marx = Theseus?31 Mar 2021 · 30:25
5. 5#3 Harnessed to confinitude4 Apr 2020 · 1:24:19
6. 6#4 Sound ghettos3 Dec 2020 · 34:55

Summary produced automatically from 13 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.