MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Since trumpeter Miles Davis died in 1991, Columbia Records has aggressively combed its vaults for unreleased music. This week, it put out a three-disc, one-DVD set devoted to the jazz maverick's so-called Lost Quintet, his touring band from 1969. Critic Tom Moon says "Live in Europe 1969" captures Miles Davis at a critical moment of transition.
TOM MOON, BYLINE: You'd think there'd be nothing left.
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MOON: After a slew of multi-disc sets devoted to key points in the career of Miles Davis, by now, surely Columbia would have put out every speck of consequential music. Turns out, not quite.
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MOON: Playing hard, and pivoting between moods and meters with whiplash-inducing quickness, the members of Miles Davis' little-heard third quintet are breathing a brand of fire that's clearly time-stamped 1969. The touring group, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette, sounds like it's energized by developments in music that go far beyond jazz.
But they're still playing tunes that were part of Miles' repertoire in the late 1950s, like this standard, "I Fall in Love Too Easily."
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MOON: The tune might be old, but the treatment isn't. Miles was determined to be part of the new music that was erupting, and he recognized that he'd have to jettison most traces of swing to do it. The first concert in this set was recorded in July 1969, just a month before the recording sessions for his groundbreaking jazz-rock experiment "Bitches Brew." The band can be heard working on several of those long-form vamp-based tunes.
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MOON: Until now, this short-lived version of the Miles Davis Quintet has been a phantom; it never made a studio recording. After "Bitches Brew" came out in January 1970, Miles expanded his band and became fully immersed in his next phase, mixing improvisation with rock, R&B and spacey funk rhythms.
"Live in Europe 1969" catches the moment of transition. A profoundly new non-jazz landscape is coming into view. The territory hasn't been mapped yet. There are no rules and very few structures or signposts. That can sometimes be terrifying, but it sounds like these five intense musicians like it that way.
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BLOCK: That was Tom Moon reviewing "Miles Davis Quintet Live in Europe 1969 - the bootleg series, volume 2."