Miles Davis, still at 100 percent after 100 years - 48 hills

A 90-minute tribute celebrated Miles Davis’s centennial with an all-star ensemble performing his music across multiple decades. The pianist John Beasley kept the focus on the performers, delaying introductions and emphasizing that Miles influenced not only how jazz is played but also how jazz is listened to. Kind of Blue was highlighted as a modern-jazz landmark that continues to inspire innovation. Dizzy Gillespie’s perspective described Miles’s restrained approach, using fewer notes and more open space. The musicians treated the repertoire as an exploratory challenge rather than a museum piece, referencing Miles’s idea that the correctness of a note depends on what follows it. The program moved from Birth of the Cool to Bitches Brew and onward into later eras.

"“Miles influenced not just how we play jazz but how we listen to jazz,” Beasley said. 1959's Kind of Blue album created modern jazz, still outselling contemporary jazz albums and inspiring legions of jazz players to innovate (including legends John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, who all played on the record)."

"Dizzy Gillespie described why Miles stood out from the jump. His music “expressed less fire than we did, played less notes, less quickly, and used more open space... I liked to fill up a bar myself-the Charlie Parker school-to take advantage of every space that's there instead of just leaving it to go over into the next bar. Miles had wide open spaces.”"

"The performers on stage, who hold multiple Grammys between them, hopped among Davis' decades and innovative styles, treating his music as an exploratory experience, not a musty museum. This was their last stop on a multi-city tour (unlimited miles, indeed), having just recorded a live album at Blue Note Tokyo. Beasley shares that he can't think of a better city to end a tour than San Francisco."

"Then they all dove right in again, relishing the musical challenge famously laid down by Miles: “It's not the note that you play that's the wrong note-it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.” Next stop was 1949, with The Complete Birth of the Cool, then a trip to 1970 and Bitches Brew, and then off again into the 1980s, where Davis found ins"

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