Miles Davis - Porgy and Bess - 2 x Blu-spec CD2

2023

In 1958, George Gershwin’s opera Porgy And Bess was very much in vogue. Several jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Collette, and Mundell Lowe had already created their own versions of certain songs. Cal Lampley, George Avakian’s successor, wanted to take advantage of the fact that a film version of the opera was in production. Gil Evans’ adaptation of Gershwin’s score was a veritable tour de force. He chose certain pieces and reorganized the chronology of the original work, adding “Gone,” a completely original work whose tonal combinations placed it among his masterworks. The fierce violence of the orchestra’s overture, the funeral lamentations of “Gone, Gone, Gone,” and the powerful clamors of “Prayer” seized the audience and released their grip only to overwhelm them with the astonishing romanticism of the trumpeter who, with an actor’s intuition and a dandy’s grace, slipped into the skin of the different characters.

Original issue: Columbia LP CS 8095 on March 9, 1959
Producer: Cal Lampley
Engineer: Frank Laico
July 22, 1958