Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue



In advance of our show with the jazz pianist Vijay Iyer this Thursday, we dug through our old Connection archives and found this wonderful conversation about Miles Davis from 2000.

In the Church of Jazz, Miles Davis’ album “Kind of Blue” is a holy icon. From a humble birth in 1959 as forty-five minutes of improvised music recorded in two sessions, “Kind Of Blue” has become the best-selling classical jazz record of all-time. Rock stars cite it as a clear influence. Aspiring musicians say it got them hooked on jazz. Aficionados insist it explains jazz. In 1959, Miles Davis was already the innovator who introduced Hard Bop and Cool to jazz.

He wanted his sextet for “Kind of Blue” to be a laboratory for a new experimental style he called “modal jazz” which would free the soloist forever from the old rules and structures of music. Add to that a Dream Team of talent separated by two degrees from every great jazz record ever and “Kind of Blue” became an album that almost transcended music.

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