Miles Davis - Miles in Tokyo - Blu-spec CD2

2023

Miles in Tokyo is a live album recorded on July 14, 1964, by the Miles Davis Quintet (featuring Sam Rivers, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams) at the Tokyo Kōsei Nenkin Kaikan, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. It is the first recording of Davis in Japan and the only album to showcase an early incarnation of his Second Great Quintet featuring Sam Rivers on tenor saxophone, following George Coleman's departure. After this, Wayne Shorter's appointment completed the classic line-up which recorded such albums as ESP and Miles Smiles, through to Miles in the Sky.

The young rhythm section of the quintet dreamed of a saxophonist more avid to join them in their audacity, and Tony Williams recommended Eric Dolphy. Miles found the playing of this young avant-garde musician careless and lacking in elegance. He let himself be persuaded to hire Sam Rivers whose musical tastes were still ambiguous; although he was three years older than Miles, Rivers still had the body of his work ahead of him. Rivers had grown up with bop, but showed an inclination for free jazz, which he never abandoned. In his company, Miles visited Japan for the first time and showed a special respect for Japanese audiences, for whom he temporarily gave up his habit of leaving the stage during other musicians’ solos. Some even saw in this deference an explanation for the moderation of the quintet’s risk-taking. The remarks that Sam Rivers made on the bebop nature of the group—although he himself seemed relatively conventional—corroborated the hypothesis of a lack of understanding between two avant-gardes, each indifferent to the other and each with a different perspective. Their confrontation, however, remains no less gripping.

Original issue: CBS/Sony Japan LP SONX 60064 on June 6, 1969 in Japan
Producer: Kiyoshi Itoh
Engineer: Unknown
Miles Davis (tpt); Sam Rivers (ts); Herbie Hancock (p); Ron Carter (b); Tony Williams (d)
Recorded live at Kohseinenkin Hall, Tokyo, Japan on July 14, 1964