Track Listing

1. Song No 2
2. Once Upon A Summertime
3. Aos Pes Da Cruz
4. Song No 1
5. Wait Till You See Her
6. Corcovado (Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars)
7. Summer Nights
8. Time Of The Barracudas

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #134299 in Music
• Released on: 1997-10-06
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

CD Description
QUIET NIGHTS, the fourth Columbia collaboration between Miles Davis and arranger Gil Evans, has the reputation of beingan inconsequential patchwork of unfinished charts and snippets. Truncated though it might be (the original LP clocked in under 30 minutes), the resulting album is a brilliant (andsatisfying) Brazilian-flavoured blend of pop and jazz, including slow, darkly melodic versions of Jobim's "Corcovado" and Michel Legrand's "Once Upon A Summertime". This remastered CD reissue also includes an unfinished 13-minute suite called "The Time Of The Barracudas", originally written for thetheatre, and a successfully spliced together experiment in the "third-stream".

Customer Reviews

Miles plays the Bossanova
This was truly an interesting session but unfortunately it also marked the end of a collaboration of two musicians that marked the history of music permanently. So let 's be blunt, this session does not stand up to neither : "Porgy and Bess", "Miles Ahead" or "Scetches of Spain", but still the music contained in it is beautiful yet very incomplete. In 1962 the Bossanova scene was truly VERY hot and Miles Davis having dispanded his first great quintet and after the success of "Scetches of Spain" gave in to Columbia's persistent efforts to get him to record a bossanova record with Gil Evans.

The idea was not necessarily bad just because it was a bit biased, but Columbia's urge to make as much money as possible from this trend and to make it fast, led them to cut the record and push it to the market, without allowing the two musicians to actually finish the record. While they were having a month's break from their first date in the studio when they begun the record, without consulting neither of the two, Columbia cut the record on April of 1963. The result was that the record got very bad reviews (much worse than it actually deserved) and led to the two artists exchanging some bad words and breaking up their musical cooperation for quite a while. And even when they got together again they did not record an entire album but only individual tracks.

To cut a long story short what we have here is some very sweet tunes and some obviously incomplete or average takes of songs lasting a total of 22 minutes. The very interesting 13 minute bonus track composition of "times of the Barracudas" conducted by Evans and performed by the second great Miles Davis quintet with George Coleman on sax (instead of Wayne Shorter that was still in Art Blakey's Messengers at the time) was performed for a theatrical play on May of 1963 and has absolutely nothing to do with the bossanova. It concludes an uneven CD with some very beautiful moments, but nothing close to the standards Evans and Davis set before. Maybe it is worth 4 stars but the bar was already set very high...

Don't always trust the critics
This album has I feel has been needlessly given a bad press over the years. Indeed, it is reputed that Miles and indeed Gil Evans did not want this album released!
However, I think Miles and others maybe have been too harsh in their judgement of this album. It isn't that bad at all. Recorded on the West Coast it indeed has that West Coast laid back feel to the album. Anyway, I like this album and I would recommend it. It has for me a great moods of melancholy, menace and joy within it. It IS in the mould of Sketches of Spain in particular and also maybe Porgy and Bess for sound and arrangements.
The highlight tracks for me are 'once upon a Summertime' and the 'Night of the Barracudas' which is intersting episodic piece, in that it was written for astage play which was to star Laurence Harvey and is very moody. Miles plays both his famous Harmon Mute and some lovely Open trumpet on this album.
It is a very accesible album and user friendly. Trust your instincts,forget the 'critics' if you like mellow jazz this album will serve you well.