Track Listing

1. Concerto De Aranjuez
2. Will O' The Wisp
3. Pan Piper
4. Saeta
5. Solea

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2507 in Music
• Released on: 1997-10-06
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Extra tracks, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, Import
• Dimensions: .24 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Miles Davis's impact on jazz is almost incalculable. From his early days as a sideman for Charlie Parker, through his groundbreaking Birth of the Cool sessions, to his stunning small groups of the 1950s and 1960s, through to his electric renaissance, the trumpeter, bandleader and composer has left a deep mark on all who came after. He is one of jazz's true giants. Sketches of Spain, though one of Davis's most commercially successful sessions, is also one of his most controversial. Re-teaming with arranger and composer Gil Evans, who played such a pivotal role in Davis's 1949 Birth of the Cool recordings, Davis recorded a series of large group albums beginning in the late 1950s, including Porgy and Bess, Miles Ahead, and Quiet Nights. Sketches of Spain, with its emphasis on flamenco, rich orchestrations and relaxed tempos is certainly one of Davis's most mellow recordings (he even works out on fluegelhorn), and proved to have broad appeal. To some critics, however, the project was "elevated elevator music". -- Fred Goodman

CD Description
The crown jewel of the epic Evans/Davis triptych that beganwith MILES AHEAD and PORGY AND BESS, SKETCHES OF SPAIN is as emotionally compelling as any performance in the trumpeter's remarkable body of works. Combining as it does the emotional gravity of two cultures--the deep song of flamenco musicand the rich lament of the blues--SKETCHES OF SPAIN is a musical hybrid of enormous power and beauty. Gil Evans' immense canvas of orchestral colours inspires some of Davis' most deeply felt solo flights. He paints vast vistas of velvety, shimmering night sounds, and through it all runs the mountainous backbone of Spain's native rhythms and chants.
The centrepiece of SKETCHES OF SPAIN is the Evans/Davis treatmentof the second movement of Rodrigo's "Concierto De Aranjuez". Evans' charts engage Davis in a shifting, insistent dialogue, italicising the trumpeter's subtle variations and timbral ecstasies with magnificent orchestral flourishes. The surreal patina of three flutes and harp, high muted trumpets andwoodwinds, and subterranean trombones, French horns and tuba that define one of the main variations on the theme, is a majestic foil for Davis' expressive tones.
Gil Evans liked to say that after Louis Armstrong, no one had affected thesound of the trumpet like Miles Davis. Miles fashioned a vibrato-less, introspective brass cry, made all the more lovely by his lush use of the middle and lower registers. Davis' manipulation of pitch on "Saeta" and "Solea" is so idiomatic, so vocalised, so full of revel and lament, it pierces yourheart with heroic resignation and longing. SKETCHES OF SPAIN stands alone as one of the pillars of modern music.

Customer Reviews

DAVIS' BRASS RENDITION OF RODRIGO'S CONCERTO IS PERFECT
The first time I heard Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo for Spanish guitar and symphonic orchestra it was performed by virtuoso Narciso Yepes. It was the most incredible music I had heard, decades ago. The world agreed because since Yepes first recorded Rodrigo's concerto four decades ago literally hundreds of different artists recorded this ethereal music. Enter Miles Davis.

Davis adapted the guitar solo to trumpet and created yet another kind of ethereal music. For his original guitar composition, Rodrigo balanced the gentle tones of the solo instrument with orchetral brass .... which often plays dissonant chords, but with soft understatement. What Davis produced is not simply transposing guitar to trumpet and the symphonic orchestral parts to a large brass section. Rather, Davis created a new sound by fusing American jazz styles with Spanish undertones. Rather than softening the brass so as not to drown out the acoustic guitar, the volume was raised in Davis' rendition and now the powerful solo trumpet carries on a dialog with an occasionally competing, and at other times counterpointal, brass section.

I imagine that when Rodrigo wrote Concierto de Aranjuez, he couldn't have imagined how far removed from his native Spain this music would travel ... reinterpreted by the American jazz world. But there it is. Had Narciso Yepes never played the concerto and the world only heard Miles Davis' rendition then the world would still have been quite happy. But now there are both kinds of music, and the lucky listener can decide to move between the two worlds of Davis and Yepes. What a triumph for modern music!

A different kind of Miles
Miles lays his trumpet down against Gil Evans arrangements of Rodrigo's Concierto De Aranjuez (Normally features classical guitar) and De Fallas Will O' the Wisp. The other three tunes were penned by Evans. The orchestration is exquisite and repays repeated listenings. Over this Davis solos in a restrained manner but the emotion of his playing continually shines through.
This is a very original album and sounds like nothing else.
A masterpiece.

Gloriously, stupidly brilliant...
It would be all to easy to go off and review 'Kind Of Blue' and churn out the standard 'Best jazz album ever made' lines along with everyone else - but for this reviewer, 'Sketches Of Spain' is, in many respects, the superior piece. Recorded during a highly prolific period for Davis, each track carries the same lazy, loping swoon exercised so beatifully on the opener 'Concierto de Aranjuez', without losing its own individuality. To describe the pieces in any more detail is to trivialize the sheer quantity and depth of ideas and emotions contained within. This is not an album to fill pregnant pauses at partys, or to be casually sampled once in a while. It is an album to be studied, cherished and, above all, played again and again. Don't just listen - try to HEAR. This is, after all, quintessential Miles...