This research and information guide provides a wide range of scholarship on the life, career, and musical legacy of Miles Davis, and is compiled for an interdisciplinary audience of scholars in jazz and popular music, musicology, and cultural studies. It serves as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field.

Most discussions of musical influences that have shaped the styles of jazz composers have centered on the impact that fellow jazz musicians have played in their development. Many jazz figures, however, have also been strongly affected by various aspects of classical music of different periods and styles. This thesis explores the classical elements found in the musical style of Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, and Dave Brubeck through biographical research and analysis of significant works. Such an examination will help to ground, and in some cases challenge, assumptions that have previously been made about the formation of these jazz pianists' styles. Evans was inspired by elements of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Olivier Messiaen, and Alexander Scriabin. These influences had an impact on how Evans approached harmony (chord planing, stacked fourths, etc.), ensemble, and melody. Hancock utilizes elements of Debussy and Ravel as well, but he also turned to the contemporary electronics of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The French composers influenced Hancock's improvisational style and orchestration, but Stockhausen's experiments inspired him to explore different electronic styles of music that would affect his music into the 1980s. Instead of Debussy and Ravel, Taylor turned to the music of Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók, creating music that features a very percussive playing style and obscure meter. Brubeck's music drew largely from the polytonal characteristics of Darius Milhaud. This interest in mixing key centers led Brubeck to create a unique improvisational style that lent itself to mixed meters as well.

(Jazz Instruction). A complete musical analysis of one of the greatest jazz masters of all time. This comprehensive text studies and analyzes the works, provides transcriptions of the solos, and much more. For all music enthusiasts. Songs covered include: All Blues * Four * Freddie Freeloader * My Funny Valentine * Nardis * So What * Solar * Stella by Starlight * Tune Up * and more!

From the moment it was recorded more than 40 years ago, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue was hailed as a jazz classic. To this day it remains the bestselling jazz album of all time, embraced by fans of all musical genres. The album represented a true watershed moment in jazz history, and helped to usher in the first great jazz revolution since bebop. The Making of Kind of Blue is an exhaustively researched examination of how this masterpiece was born. Recorded with pianist Bill Evans, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, composer/theorist George Russell and Miles himself, the album represented a fortuitous conflation of some of the real giants of the jazz world, at a time when they were at the top of their musical game. The end result was a recording that would forever change the face of American music. Through extensive interviews and access to rare recordings Nisenson pieced together the whole story of this miraculous session, laying bare the genius of Miles Davis, other musicians, and the heart of jazz itself.