After 60 years, we decided to commemorate the historic concert of Miles Davis in Prague։ Videos, Photos

Jazz Blues News 2024 debuts with a truly remarkable display of genius. The heart of this event is the Teatro della Triennale, on whose stage the most important and characteristic concerts of the Festival take place, which this year will be held over the course of an entire month.

In 1964, the hall was called Teatro dell’Arte, and this name will already make the ears of long-time jazz lovers ring. That same year, perhaps the most memorable of the jazz concerts held there in the early 1960s took place: that of the Miles Davis quintet, the quintet par excellence, the one with Wayne Shorter on sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass and the almost underage Tony Williams on drums. And the date was precisely October 11.

Miles and his Cats. For Tony Williams today Telefono Azzurro would have moved

And exactly sixty years after then Jazz Blues News decided to commemorate the event with three successive screenings of a RAI film of about an hour that documents the historic concert almost entirely. Each screening on the big screen was preceded by a short presentation by renowned scholars. The one at 4pm that I attended featured on stage, in addition to the Artistic Director Luciano Linzi, Stefano Zenni, Luca Bragalini and Luca Conti. Connected via the web from his home in New York, Ashley Kahn, author of very important books on 60s jazz, also participated: suffice it to say that Sony allowed him to listen to the original master tapes of the entire ‘Kind of Blue’ session, tapes that almost never leave the air-conditioned safe where they are normally kept.

It was immediately clear that this was a very special occasion: the room was full in the middle of a Friday afternoon on a weekday (imagine the subsequent reruns).

Kahn makes his debut: on the Cinemascope screen behind him, we do not glimpse the austere cell of a scholar, but the lair of an authentic fan, plastered with posters, photos and records. Our man begins in a willing and much appreciated Italian, but after a few minutes the conversation thickens and then he switches to English, quickly translated by Linzi. Kahn has a well-structured lineup on some essential points. First of all, he recalls that the Quintet in Milan was at one of his first public appearances. Our man was keen to underline that to this day this band constitutes an exemplary model still shown and analyzed in all American conservatories and music schools where there is a jazz department. And in those academic institutions it is classified not as an extreme offshoot of hard bop, but in a category all its own, ‘free bop’. It is therefore no coincidence that his model still hovers in many of today’s bands, even if often not with the same airy freedom of the original. Finally, Kahn sings the praises of European radio and TV that have preserved a great quantity of documents on jazz that, on the contrary, have been lost in the States: in particular, he maintains that the Rai film from 1964 has a great documentary value, both for scholars and for the public. And in jazz only what is recorded exists and influences, concludes Kahn. Fortunately, Ashley has not taken a tour of the RAI sites (Teche included) where this jazz Holy Grail is not found…..

Bragalini follows closely, relaunching Kahn’s idea on the beginnings of the formation, underlining that in particular Shorter was almost an absolute debutante in it. Which implied a lack of familiarity with the system of ‘signals’ that governed the fluid dynamics of the quintet in concert. He then emphasizes the absolute diversity between the music produced in the studio by the Quintet, based on complex original compositions that required careful rehearsals and fine-tuning, and the repertoire used in concert, which on the contrary was reduced to a book of no more than twenty standards, completely mastered by the musicians and which could therefore be expanded to the extreme in a series of digressions that were organized through the aforementioned shared ‘signals’: thus the material used live also maintained an organic structure, even if with very loose meshes.

Speaking of the other side of Miles, the ‘live’ one: in November “Miles in France, 1963 & 1964. The Bootleg Series vol.8” will be released. The series, which for years has brought us mostly unreleased recordings of Davisian groups on stage, lines up an unexpected Volume 8, which in addition to the well-known sets of Antibes 1963 with George Coleman, includes Parisian concerts held in 1964 by the Quintet now in operation with Wayne Shorter. Thanks INA, also for the magnificent sound. Here is the magical ‘So What’, a very luxurious trailer…

Zenni follows, who with his usual verve launches what was perhaps intended as a joke: “How many of you were here in 1964?”. And instead at least two hands go up in the audience, which arouses general looks of admiration and even envy. He continues by noting that the Quintet, in addition to being an organic group, actually presented itself in concert as a galaxy in which other subgroups orbited: Miles’ quartet with Hancock, Carter and Williams; Shorter’s quartet with the same Hancock, Carter and Williams; Hancock’s trio with Carter and Williams; and at times even the duo between Miles and his favourite Tony Williams.

A true musical microcosm, whose existence is demonstrated by the RAI video, in which Davis and Shorter play together only in the final reprise of the theme of ‘All Blues’ which closes the concert. Zenni then forcefully underlines that after years of restlessness and transition following above all Coltrane’s detachment, Miles shuffles everything, placing a hard-won and expensive hegemony in the American musical and intellectual environment in the hands of a handful of real kids (and we’re not just talking about the beardless Williams…). Young cats who will then be launched into dazzling careers by the Quintet. Shorter alone is somewhat of an exception, especially in his posture; but more on that later.

But the time has come to dim the lights in the hall, and it is a moment of subtle emotion. From the first shots of the video, you immediately notice that the theater has remained almost the same as it was 60 years ago, which heightens the sensation of virtually reliving the 1964 concert.

The film begins curiously with the curtain still closed, with some spectators still wandering around the stalls (interesting sociological observations could be made on the bourgeois and intellectual audience of 1964, but let’s skip over that). The concert has a strange sudden start: two piano notes ring out with the curtain still closed, immediately after the opening with the Quintet still getting ready and then off we go… the music starts running without any preamble or preparation, as if the concert had already begun in the wings.

At this point, honor and glory to the unknown director of the shot, one of the few cases in which the image really adds something to the music. If you think about the limited technical means of the time (much more than video mixers and multitracks…), the direction manages to render with great and palpable evidence the perpetuum mobile, the tension of the creation in the moment that is the essence of the Quintet by means of a tight exchange between the three (!) cameras in the field.

One in particular is strategically placed between the wings of the stage, and thus penetrates inside the band, giving us exciting close-ups of the musicians in action. Thus we see the total concentration of Miles in solo, animated by a tension that does not drop even when he steps aside to make way for Shorter and from the sides of the stage he continues to stare intensely, almost anxiously, at his young companions who are left at the helm of a ship sailing in the open sea on a route that is revealed only by sailing. A silent, non-verbal dialogue, which we will see often woven into the concert.

In addition to perfectly rendering the climate of work in progress in which the group is immersed, the recovery provides us with a well-rounded portrait of a thirty-three-year-old Shorter who emerges from the thin texture of the Quintet with truly impressive decision and authority. In addition to the density and richness of ideas in his solos, we can clearly perceive echoes of the Free that was just exploding on the other side of the Atlantic (the October Revolution in New York, note the coincidence of dates), the bold insertion of fragments of his own compositions and even some Rollinsian inflections: in short, a very different and more angular Wayne than the one we would get to know later.

Wayne, the Big Brother

But the Hancock/Carter/Williams trio also surprises. Herbie is an innovative but measured accompanist: but when the ball passes to him he immediately emerges from the texture of the group with sudden and dazzling ideas, intense and brief as a flash. Luckily, Carter and especially Williams are there to reweave a thin and fluctuating overall plot like a spider web.

Hancock showed off a tight jacket that looked like one for his first communion…

The video ends with a few quick, precious shots that give the measure of the reactions of the Milanese audience in 1964: there would be a lot to say here too, but the papyrus is already too long.

The lights come back on and the 2024 audience applauds the screen: the last time I saw something similar happen was in the mini-cinemas of my childhood… the sleight of hand was successful, congratulations Jazz Blues News.

The video quality of the RAI recording is excellent and shows off a bright range of grays typical of the time; the audio would potentially be top-notch in terms of dynamics and timbres, but unfortunately it is afflicted in the high-volume passages by the annoying ‘copy effect’, which all those who decades ago fiddled with reels and cassettes know very well. With today’s technical means and sound engineers, it would take very little to get rid of it, all that would be needed is the awareness of having in your hands a true ‘cultural asset’ that even the author of “Kind of Blue. New York 1959” envies us.

Highly recommended…

While waiting for the restoration and republishing on the RAI sites, and in the logic of the ‘big virtual sofa’ that animates this blog, we have scoured the web in search of alternative copies of the video. Having made a comparative evaluation of the defects and merits of each, the following offers the best compromise between video and audio quality. Watch it on a big screen, you too will have your dose of emotion brought by a magical October afternoon.