Portrait of Miles Davis

Text: Tom R. Schulz, April 2026

Almost anyone whose musical biography includes Miles Davis can tell their own story of where, when, and how they first heard the unmistakable sound and the unpredictable, headstrong lines of that trumpet. Call it charisma, call it aura – through the sound and the sensual intellect of Miles Davis, something entered the world that had never existed before and was nearly impossible to resist. Miles’ art was the art of a cool seducer who courts no one and at least gives the impression that he needs no applause. Improvising, he followed his unerring ears, his creative mind, his desires, his instincts, sometimes his anger.

Jazz is the music of the twentieth century. For most of those hundred years, it was – at least on the production side and with the exception of singers – largely a male domain. And most trumpeters saw themselves as alpha animals: embodiments of strength, fire, potency.

Klangkünstler, Trendsetter, Stilikone – kaum jemand hat den Jazz so sehr geprägt wie der Trompeter Miles Davis. Zum 100. Geburtstag feiert die Elbphilharmonie seine unsterbliche Musik in fünf Konzerten.

Miles Davis embodied all of that, in his music as well as in his truly eventful life. But in his tone and in his sometimes tentative, questioning style of playing, he also revealed the flip side of swaggering self-assurance: fragility, doubt, loneliness. The handsome Miles, the chauvinist Miles, the grumpy Miles, who called all the men around him, no matter how well or badly they treated him, »motherfucker«: how much poorer the world would be without him. The flamboyant Miles, who wore the most colourful and crazy clothes; the coke-drinking-sex-junkie-addict Miles; the magician Miles, who on stage could bring even the wildest musical chaos of his bandmates to a spiritual silence with a single note on the trumpet; the bloodhound and restless innovator who decisively pushed jazz forward, bent it multiple times, and truly reinvented it: this year Miles Davis would not simply have turned 100. He was himself a figure of the century.

The dentist’s son Miles Dewey Davis III was born on May 26, 1926, in Alton, Illinois, and grew up in East St. Louis on the Mississippi, in circumstances that were unusually affluent for Black Americans at the time. When he first stood in a recording studio in 1945 in New York City at the age of 18, it certainly did not yet smell like a world career. The recordings with singer Rubberlegs Williams were not a particularly memorable debut. Nor did the next early attempts, which Miles undertook shortly thereafter under the wing of Charlie Parker, suggest greatness. It was the era of bebop, in which musicians like Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie raced melodies through complex chord changes at turbo speed and, in the process, invented something like a new alphabet for jazz.

Miles learned it quickly, but by temperament he was no sprinter. Miles was a boxer. Once he was secure on his instrument, he played like a dancer, quick to react, patient, with an incredible sense of timing, an artist of the pause. Above all, he sounded different from early on. From his first trumpet teacher, Elwood Buchanan, he had learned that vibrato comes by itself, namely when you get old and shaky. As a diligent young player, he was therefore to refrain from using vibrato. He followed that advice. His tone on the instrument, often filtered through a mute, frequently sounded as hoarse and brittle as his speaking voice, which had already been damaged in the 1950s. But on the trumpet he could also scream and rage. Some lines sound as if they were carved with a cutting torch. From 1969 onward, heavily inspired by Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and James Brown, Miles altered his sound with electronic effects, seemingly venturing into realms beyond planetary boundaries.

Miles Davis’s career lasted 46 years, from 1945 until his early death in 1991. Between 1975 and 1981, however, he released nothing and was deeply mired in the swamp of multiple addictions. Today one might speak of burnout; at the time, the term did not yet exist. For 30 years, Miles created new and unheard-of music again and again with tremendous energy, while simultaneously taking a heavy toll on his body.

He left his first indelible mark on the history of jazz with recordings from the late 1940s that ultimately culminated in the album »Birth of the Cool«. Orchestrated in richly colored arrangements by Gil Evans, baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, and pianist John Lewis (Modern Jazz Quartet), nine top instrumentalists guide ambitious pieces in an intimate big-band sound that took the breakneck speed out of bebop while pioneering a musical current that would only truly flourish in the late 1950s: the Third Stream, in which the best of improvisation and notated contemporary classical music would merge. With »Miles Ahead« (1957), »Porgy and Bess« (1958), and »Sketches of Spain« (1960), the master’s extensive catalouge offers three major works for classical aficionados. All three albums, orchestrated by Gil Evans, are considered highlights of Miles’s output.

At the same time, Miles Davis set new standards in jazz with a quintet formation. The formula »trumpet and saxophone plus rhythm section with piano, bass, and drums« was not his invention – after all, it was the combination already established by his musical mentors Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. But jazz history, especially in the postwar period, moved at an extraordinary pace, so that Miles’s first quintet with Sonny Rollins (saxophone), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums) sounded miles ahead and entirely different from the jazz of the bebop pioneers just a few years after bebop’s birth. When John Coltrane replaced Sonny Rollins in September 1955 – Rollins having left to undergo drug rehabilitation – Miles’s first great quintet gained tremendous momentum: »Faster than I could imagine, we were playing incredible music«, he later recalled. »It was so insane that even at night after the concert I would still get chills down my spine, and I think the audience felt the same way.« The album tetralogy »Relaxin’«, »Steamin’«, »Workin’« and »Cookin’« recorded in two sessions in May and October 1956, attests to the stature of this quintet.

But there are many other entry points for Miles novices. Jazz-inclined cinephiles might recommend the soundtrack to »Ascenseur pour l’échafaud«, which Miles Davis recorded in early December 1957 in Paris during a single nocturnal studio session with mostly French musicians. »Elevator to the Gallows«, a film noir by Louis Malle starring Jeanne Moreau, became a classic not least because of Miles’s pointed yet sketch-like music. »Kind of Blue« (1959) was the album that established his fame far beyond jazz circles. Five timelessly beautiful pieces brought the trumpeter together one last time with the two saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, who, like all involved, delivered perhaps the most lyrical recordings of their respective careers. Pianist Bill Evans, the only white musician among them, reconciled the former heat of jazz with a European seeming intellectualism through his impressionistic, thoughtful playing. Even today, the album is the best recommendation for people who suspect jazz is only for cerebral listeners. For all its sophistication, the music of »Kind of Blue« reaches the heart directly.

From the immensely productive 1960s, there are stacks of recordings with the trumpeter’s second great quintet, which included Wayne Shorter (saxophone), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and the extraordinary drummer Tony Williams. In keeping with Miles’s anniversary year 2026, a recent reissue presents the explosive recordings of an engagement at a club in Chicago shortly before Christmas 1965 on ten LPs, »Live at the Plugged Nickel«. Miles had little regard for free jazz, but here he often comes surprisingly close to it in his own way and fueled by his phenomenal collaborators. It may be that the band in Chicago, where the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians was forming at the time, felt especially called to free, highly energetic playing against all conventions.

As a soundtrack for the hippie movement, for flower power and festivals like Woodstock, jazz was not suitable. Miles Davis, always highly sensitive to aesthetic and social currents, surrounded himself with the next generation of musicians who used electric pianos, guitars, and basses, countering the swing feel of jazz with the punch of rock music. The albums »In a Silent Way« and »Bitches Brew« (1969), as well as »Big Fun« (1969/70), mark a transitional phase; recordings of two feverishly intense concerts in Osaka on 1 February 1975, released under the titles »Agharta« and »Pangaea«, document the completed transformation into a funk- and voodoo-inspired style of free, hypnotically grooving music between jazz and rock.

After Miles’s comeback in 1981, his sound changed again, now strongly supported by synthesizers and electric guitars. He connected with the funk-pop genius of Prince, used drum machines and synthesizers, and discovered hip-hop and rap for himself. On »Decoy« (1983), a rhythm section featuring drummer Al Foster, percussionist Mino Cinelu, and Darryl Jones (electric bass) plays so ruthless for which the adjective »rock-hard« seems to have been invented. On some tracks, John Scofield sets off fireworks on guitar, and Miles plays with fiery unpredictability. »Tutu« (1986) – composed and arranged by the last major Davis collaborator Marcus Miller, who plays bass, keyboards, and even saxophones – also shows Miles in top form.

Veterans from Hamburg will remember the magnificent concerts at the Fabrik in Altona, where one preferred not to know by how much the permitted maximum attendance had been exceeded. But even those discovering the music of Miles Davis only now will find themselves transformed for life.

Vom 1. bis 6. Mai verwandelt sich der alte Kaispeicher in eine Pop-up-Bar. Hier werden so gut wie alle Alben von Miles Davis gespielt, während man bei bestem Ausblick gute Drinks genießen kann.