Review of Miles Davis: Prince of Darkness
A Tribute to Innovation and Traversing New Ground
The Australian Art Orchestra paid tribute to the music and legacy of Miles Davis at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival this week.
The Australian Art Orchestra returned to familiar territory this week, with a valiant contribution to the Melbourne International Jazz Festival at the Melbourne Town Hall: a new collection of works inspired by one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time: trumpeter, bandleader and composer Miles Davis (1926 – 1991).
Escaping the creeping cold of an impending winter on Wednesday night, an audience of music students, Australian Art Orchestra fans and Miles Davis aficionados huddled around the warming blaze of improvised jazz.
Getting off to an unusually tentative start, the Australian Art Orchestra – led by Artistic Director Paul Grabowsky – presented a trio of Davis’ most recognisable pieces, from his seminal work Birth of the Cool. The first two pieces felt a little disjointed – horns and rhythm sections not quite in the same groove – but by the time they played the third song, the haunting Moon Dreams, the dynamism and excellence we had all been expecting from the Australian Art Orchestra made its entrance.
Much to everyone’s delight, next on the menu was a reimagining of Davis’ lifelong collaborator and friend Gil Evans’ arrangement of Concierto de Aranjuez, heard through Eugene Ball’s colourful orchestration. Evans’ interpretation of this piece dances around and through strong Spanish flavours; the agitated wings of the castanets fluttering over a rich melodic bass line. Arriving as a kind of downtown Don Quixote, trumpeter Philip Slater carried the drama of the piece triumphantly but with a sensitivity to the subtleties of the work. Just as composer Joaquin Rodrigo intended: ‘as strong as a butterfly, and as dainty as a veronica’. The greatest triumph of the night, however, was an exploration of the meeting of two great influences on 20th century music: Davis, and German experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
A new work by Melbourne’s Anthony Pateras, Ontetradecagon, which ‘explores intersections between the broad lineages of free jazz and avant-garde composition’ – fascinating ground for investigation indeed – was commissioned especially for the Prince of Darkness project.
In it, Pateras allowed the musicians to improvise within a framework built on a collage of pre-recorded material, interlaced with live recordings of the principle trio (electric violin, trumpet, percussion) processed as the work progressed. The coupling of live and pre-recorded performance was very successful, as neither competed for attention; instead, they complimented each other.
Ontetradecagon was also interesting spatially. Musicians were placed strategically around the space, creating an evolving surround-sound landscape. Focus was thrown across the space erratically, only to be centralised and pulled back.
This was an uncomfortable work to witness, with Pateras himself describing the feeling, which apparently haunted the whole process of creating the work, as ‘unsafe’. The piece circled the room, quite literally capturing the audience in a net of sound, a nod to Iannis Xenakis’ famous Phillips Pavilion at Expo ‘58. Ontetradecagon was essentially a meditation on the kind of music Miles Davis might be producing if he were alive today. At Wednesday night’s performance Paul Grabowsky stated, “I know Miles would love this.” A bold statement! But legitimate: Davis was an innovator, on the cusp of several major developments in jazz over the five decades of his career. Miles Davis had a passion for traversing new ground and continuing to explore the language of music and push its boundaries; a passion that’s shared by the Australian Art Orchestra.
- Arts Hub (Zoe Rinkel), 6th May 2010
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