Miles Davis (1926–1991). He changed the history of music—not just jazz—several times. His influence is still everywhere today. We listen to his records and watch his video recordings with devotion, and the history of the Barcelona Jazz Festival is also enriched by anecdotes and experiences lived by his side. Marcus Miller, an essential collaborator in Miles’s return during the 1980s, surrounds himself with a team that includes other key former disciples of Miles—Bill Evans and Mike Stern—as well as Miller’s regular collaborators (Mino Cinelu, Russell Gunn, Brett Williams and Anwar Marshall) to celebrate the centenary of one of the pivotal figures of 20th-century music.
The idea, Miller explains, is to perform music from the iconic 1981 album We Want Miles!, recorded live in Japan, along with other classics from the trumpeter’s repertoire from the 1950s and 1960s, leading up to the Tutu era (1986) and Amandla (1989). “We will play music from all the periods of Miles’s career,” Miller wrote to us, “but I also want to use these incredible musicians with whom I’ll be coming to Barcelona to take Miles into the future and explore things he would surely have been interested in investigating.” Because, ultimately, “Miles never looked back; he always focused on the future.”
We Want Miles!, absolutely.
