BY: DIGITAL WAX MEDIA STAFF

 

It was over six decades ago that legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis released Porgy and Bess, an enduring exploration of third stream orchestral jazz and one of musician’s most notable collaborations with arranger Gil Evans.

 

The album is formed around arrangements from the 1935 Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess, and has become renowned since its release as demonstrative of what is creatively possible with regard to blending the stylistic elements of jazz and classical music. The idea of crossing the genres was not entirely new at the time, as the concept had been explored previously by artists such as Charlie Parker through 1950’s Charlie Parker with Strings.

 

Porgy and Bess is particularly significant in that it marks a key point in Davis’ exploration of musical modes, a concept which would heavily inform his numerical jazz masterpiece Kind of Blue, which would hit shelves just five months later. This approach would entail a substantial departure from the rigorous harmonic awareness associated with bebop, a musical format in which successful execution is highly contingent upon musicians’ capacity to actively maintain cognizance of chord changes, tonal center, and harmonic relationships between notes while playing.

 

Davis, an active participant in the world of bebop himself – Davis would perform as a sideman for Charlie Parker in the 1940s – would purportedly become privy to modal composition through a 1953 text by pianist George Russell. It would be the input of arranger Gil Evans that would prove vital in Davis’ departure from traditional chord structures.

 

Gil Evans – not to be confused with pianist Bill Evans, with whom Davis would collaborate around this same period to push the envelope in terms of modality – would collaborate with Davis on many projects, perhaps the most notable of which were: Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain.

 

Davis would point out that, rather than presenting him with a chord chart for the arrangement of “I Love You, Porgy,” the arranger instead offered him a scale to follow. This, according to Davis, offered a certain musical freedom previously inaccessible in more stringent forms of jazz.

 

Evans’ arrangements and compositions were modeled in such a way as to accommodate this musical approach. Thus, the accompaniment comprising Porgy and Bess, and later Sketches of Spain, would often make use of very sparse chords, which oftentimes would endure for extended periods rather than shifting consistently to create drastic harmonic movement. These minimalist accompanying soundscapes presented a vast canvas upon which Davis would be able to express an array of sonic ideas without bumping up against unwanted dissonances and clunky harmonics.

 

“Miles’ beauty and variety of tone, his versatile manipulation of horns, is put to excellent use here as he – with the orchestral projections of Gil’s arrangements – produces incomparable renderings of ‘Porgy And Bess’,” said Charles Edward Smith of the project.

 

Davis and Evans’ stark and haunting work on Porgy and Bess would cement Davis’ growing status as one of the most inventive and forward thinking of the contemporary jazz musicians of his day. Furthermore, the album would come to he praised as one of the musical peaks in Davis’ already impressive discography, and those within the world of jazz would ultimately declare the album to be of historical significance within the genre.

 

Recorded in its entirety over the course of just four days in late July and early August of 1958 in a New York City studio, Porgy and Bess remains a vital and captivating work well over half a century since its March 1959 release. The intuitive nature in which the lead artist and arranger behind the work seem to navigate the musicality of one another endows the project with a certain singularity and sort of musical intent that is unwavering throughout the album’s 50-minute runtime.

 

Though like most albums – in the jazz canon and otherwise – Porgy and Bess may be lacking in the casual and aesthetic appeal of a Kind of Blue, the album remains artistically definitive much in the same way as Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, released over a decade later and fusing jazz, funk and rock elements in no small part on the influence of later Miles Davis efforts like Bitches Brew and On the Corner.

 

Some critics have praised Porgy and Bess as Miles Davis’ most notable achievement, with even more heralding the record as the peak of the collaborative relationship between Davis and Gil Evans. In any case, Porgy and Bess remains a landmark effort in the dual exploration of the respective jazz and classical idioms, and serves as a creative beacon still today to inspire musicians and creators of all types to stray from the beaten path to the end of conjuring something wholly game-changing.

 

Photo: Miles Davis ‘Porgy and Bess’ Album Artwork – Fair Use

 

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