Closing the 3 hour show that covered almost every musical phase of Miles Davis’ career, bassist and Davis alumni Marcus Miller pointed out that “one thing that Miles never did was look back.” You’d wonder what the Prince of Darkness would have thought about each of the bands that gave various tributes to his musical, sartorial and attitudinal legacy.
Drummer Jimmy Cobb, the only living member of the original band that performed on the iconic Kind of Blue 1959 album, brought together a multi-generational team that not only performed each song in it’s in original order, but in the order of each soloist, not unlike a classical performance. Jeremy Pelt/tp, Vincent Herring/as, Javon Jackson/ts, Larry Willis/p and Buster Williams/b all delivered personal solos over the gliding ride cymbal drive of the leader, but the sensitive acoustic subtleties of the 50+ year opus were lost in the giant half shell of space. While the music sounded quite hip and sleek, it also sounded a bit tired. Maybe no one should perform these pieces after Cobb leaves to his eternal reward
Moving up about 7-10 years in music and social changes, the Miles Electric band, consisting of 11 musicians which included Nicholas Payton/tp, Antoine Roney/sax, Darryl Jones/b, John Beasley/p and a myriad of drummers, percussionists, keyboardists, turntablers, etc produced a wide ranging sound of psychedelia. Meldings of jazz and rock shook the foundations on stampeding renditions of “Jack Johnson,” Spanish Key” and “In A Silent Way,” while the cascading horns by Payton and Roney blithely splintered apart during a harrowing “Nefertiti.” The closing “Jean Pierre,” with its catchy bass line, was the most enjoyable moment of the set, which was a perfect segue into the final band, since its leader, Marcus Miller was the guy who actually performed on the original recording of it.
Much to Marcus’ credit, and to the enjoyment of Mr. Davis, if he were able to see from below (or above?-any takers?), Miller and Company did indeed perform a modicum of material from the most successful of Davis’ “late period” albums, but he arranged the tunes like “Splatch” and “Tutu” in fresh and forward thinking ways, not putting them into a silver frame, but remolding them with a direction into the future. Along with Louis Cato/dr, Alex Han/sax, Federico Pena/key and the golden trumpet of Sean Jones, Miller used his patented hammer-thumbed bass to capture the essence of Davis’ personality on the irresistibly interesting “Jekyll & Hyde” as well as on the groove laden “Portia.” Switching to bass clarinet, Miller filled the Bowl with agonizingly beautiful sounds on the haunting “Goree,” showing that jazz, like faith, tends to be at its best when looking forward.