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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/arts/music/new-miles-davis-boxed-set-features-his-quintet-at-its-peak.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160818
New Miles Davis Boxed Set Features His Quintet at Its Peak
By NATE CHINENAUG. 18, 2016
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Miles Davis
Credit
Bernie Thrasher/Metronome, via Getty Images
The Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s has long been praised as one of the most advanced small groups in jazz history, and anyone seeking to test the claim can choose from an abundance of evidence: studio albums, concert and club recordings, multi-disc collections. This fall will bring a new addition: “Freedom Jazz Dance — The Bootleg Series Vol. 5,” a three-CD boxed set.
Due out on Columbia/Legacy on Oct. 21, it features studio recordings made from 1966 to 1968 — during the creative peak of the band, which featured Davis on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums. Along with master takes of familiar tracks like “Footprints,” the set will include more than two hours of previously unreleased material — including the full session reels for the 1967 album “Miles Smiles.”
The behind-the-scenes totality of this approach, which includes studio dialogue and false starts along with finished and alternate takes, will be of principal interest to connoisseurs. In some instances, the newly issued material captures a decisive moment of creation.
“Nefertiti,” a Shorter composition, is a choice example: Released as the title track of a Davis album from 1968, it’s famous for not including a single solo, functioning instead as a kind of flowing drum concerto for Mr. Williams. On the session reel for the track you hear Davis halt the band and suggest this approach, to the giddy delight of the players.
Among the other highlights of the set — produced by Steve Berkowitz, Michael Cuscuna and Richard Seidel — are the complete session reels for “Water Babies” and “Fall,” and a curio titled “Blues in F (My Ding),” a home recording of Davis on piano, illustrating an idea for Mr. Shorter.
Columbia/Legacy has released four other Miles Davis boxed sets under the “Bootleg Series” brand, starting with “Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1,” which was widely and justly acclaimed. The most recent, last year, was “Miles Davis at Newport 1955-75: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4.”
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