How Far Ahead Was That ?

I may have got my self imposed chronology wrong when working through the Miles Davis disks on the shelf and should have dealt with Miles Ahead last time but I'm not enough of an anorak to worry about that. This is the third of the trilogy of albums that Miles ( it's always "Miles" isn't it, never "Davis" ) made with orchestrations by Gil Evans. Unlike Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain, there was no specific theme to Miles Ahead, although it does retain a little of a Spanish tinge left over from the latter. Evans did envisage it as a kind of suite however and the numbers merge one into another with virtually no break, years before any rock concept album. The compositions are mainly taken from various fellow jazzers like Brubeck, Jamal, Johnson and Carisi as well as Gershwin and even Delibes. Like the other Evans collaborations and unlike the small group albums, the focus is on Miles as soloist and he is in lyrical mood, even on the blues based numbers. All three of the Miles Davis / Gil Evans projects stand the test of time and have wide appeal but the feeling was beginning to emerge that Miles was ready to move on to more radical and less constrained ventures.