Seven Steps to Heaven: Amorosi on Miles Davis at 100 - JazzTimes

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Miles Davis’s Prestige debut — featuring the late, great Sonny Rollins, tenor saxophone, alongside Jackie McLean (side 1 only), Walter Bishop Jr., Tommy Potter and Art Blakey.

Miles Davis would likely have loved turning 100.

Re-listening to his latter-day catalog — along with much of his canon in rapt anticipation of May’s centenary celebration — whether you dug his glossy hip-hop touches on posthumous releases such as Doo-Bop and Rubberband or not, you had to applaud his refusal to stagnate, his continued reach into new rhythms, new vibes and newer technologies.

That sort of thinking and doing is what led Davis into the flamenco classicism of Sketches of Spain, the Broadway operatics of Porgy and Bess, the electric noise ronk of Bitches Brew, and the poptronica of Tutu: his need for speed, his want of change, his desire to morph, genre-less, into something else. And his eschewing of his past, and of jazz itself.

“I have no feel for it anymore; it’s more like warmed-over turkey” and “Jazz is dead … it’s finito. It’s over and there’s no point aping the shit” are but two of Davis’s notable comments on his dismissal of the term.

Thinking about Davis forever moving forward, a young player such as Kamasi Washington (who’ll celebrate Miles 100 with his set at Newport 2026) would certainly have been poached by the trumpet god, just as he did Coltrane and Wayne before him. These things would have put Miles ever-so-slightly ahead of the curve — just where we like him.

In consideration of his 100th birthday (and named for “Seven Steps to Heaven,” my favorite of Davis compositions, pre-Bitches Brew), this is my personal “seven steps” to my deepest Miles moments and what I’m looking forward to during this year of birthday celebration.

1. The First Time

You never forget your first time seeing Miles Davis. For me in 1983, it wasn’t that hot — a free outdoor show along Philadelphia’s waterfront, the day before July 4. On tour for Star People, Miles may have blown like a pressure cooker unleashed at times (and, at other times, strangely dozy). But it was hard to get around how bland Davis’s version of fusion-funk sounded live, and how high in the terrible mix were Mike Stern’s guitar and Bill Evans’s saxophone. While I was in awe of his legend, this live iteration of Davis was clunky.

Luckily, the supple pop of Tutu, his apt-titled, quietly theatrical score for Siesta, the African-accented Amandla and his Academy of Music concerts of 1986 and 1991 settled the score, turned my head back around and righted the ships where the brilliance of Miles — recorded and in concert — again came clear.

2. We Want Marcus Miller (and Jason Miles)

When I wrote my 2020 feature on the short-lived, mutual admiration, ego-tripping relationship between Miles Davis and Prince for JazzTimes, the person I wanted to speak with the most was the trumpeter’s longtime producer and bassist Marcus Miller . Via The Man with the Horn (1981), Miller brought Miles back to life and made him user-friendly for the likes of Prince. “When you were around him, your senses were on super-high intensity,” Miller told me. “Everything became more important. Everything you played, everything he played, had a light shone on it.”

One of the reasons I am saddest that I’m not making it to June’s Montréal Jazz Fest is that Miller is debuting his Miles 100 tribute with Mike Stern and Bill Evans. I’m all about second chances. And I haven’t witnessed Miller’s stage work in forever. If anyone wants to give me a lift to the Canadian border, please write me in care of JazzTimes.

Also noteworthy: One of Marcus Miller’s cohorts, keyboardist and programmer Jason Miles — who worked with Miller and Miles on Tutu, Siesta and Amandla — has his own new album of originals, out in time for the birthday bash, 100 Miles for Miles Davis. This record features Randy Brecker, Russell Gunn, Vinnie Colaiuta and more in tribute to Davis and the moments that made Miles Miles — such as “Jeanne Moreau.” Magnifique.

3. Live Miles 100, with Popcorn

The third promised-to-be-dynamic live tribute to Miles comes courtesy a sturdy string ensemble of Juilliard alumni playing alongside director Stanley Nelson’s 2019 documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, May 26, at the intimate National Sawdust in Brooklyn. (New York’s Summerstage showcase of August 21 will offer much more room to dance, dream and view this same live concert/viewing party jam, at Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield.)

Days later at the world-famous Apollo Theater in Harlem — May 29 — Murray Lerner’s doc Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue screens before a panel conversation and an evening dedicated to all-things Miles under the umbrella title Muted Genius .

Another necessary piece of the Miles puzzle is John Beasley , a keyboardist who became part of the Davis universe in 1989 at the advice of drummer Vince Wilburn Jr. (Miles’s nephew),...