Those (like myself) who take their listening seriously and believe that listening can always be enhanced by a sense of history, whether it involves classical music or jazz, should be alerted to a particularly special offering in the current SFJAZZ season, Bitches Brew Revisited. Bitches Brew was originally released as a double (vinyl) album of sessions led by trumpeter Miles Davis in April of 1970; so this "revisitation" is, in part, a 40th anniversary celebration. In a deeper sense, however, it is much more than that, because of the nature of the music itself.
Most importantly, the music was a product of Miles' interest in the impact of electronic instruments on advancing the nature of rock, an interest that emerged in 1968 with "Stuff" and "Brown Hornet." Beyond the instruments themselves, however, was an increasing attention to contributions from studio editing. Stereophonic sound technology had escalated home and personal listening to a spatial experience, and record producers were discovering that this experience could be enhanced by deliberate mixing techniques. The Beatles are often credited as pioneers in exploiting this technology, although Leopold Stokowski had experimented with inducing spatial effects in the original soundtrack for Fantasia. However, it is quite possible that the acclaim given to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, may have played a role in convincing Miles that this was territory worth exploring.
Thus, one way to approach Bitches Brew is as a grand experiment to bring established jazz practices into the "spatial electronics" of the rock world. It was also a significant effort to build on the extended durations of several of the In a Silent Way tracks. Just as a major advance in classical music practice emerged as performance became more than building up the number of variations one could invent on a single theme, Miles wanted to push jazz beyond playing a tune and then letting everyone in the group take a turn at improvising on it. John Coltrane had already pushed the envelope on just how long one could be inventive with a single song (sometimes to Miles' consternation); and he had broken with the improvised tune genre earlier in the sixties (as he had broken with Miles). However, even in a major work as far out as Ascension, Trane was always grounded in the rhetoric of traditional jazz. By embracing rock Miles was seeking a new rhetoric, based only in part on performance itself but augmented with the expressiveness of imaginative studio mixing.
From this point of view, "revisiting" Bitches Brew in a "live" performance experience runs the risk of being paradoxical. On the other hand the instruments themselves have become more sophisticated. One can now do things with "live electronics" that were barely a gleam in a technician's eye back in 1970. Consequently, the decision to bring music that had originated to such a great degree in scrupulous studio manipulation is, itself, as grand an experiment as the original Bitches Brew project was. Thus the performance experience is likely to depend heavily on the instruments brought to the stage and the imaginative capacity of their performers.
Consider, then, who those performers will be and what instruments they will be playing. The "role" of Miles will be taken by Graham Haynes on cornet. Antoine Roney will be playing both saxophones and bass clarinet, thus covering material that had originated with both Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone and Bennie Maupin on bass clarinet. The electric guitar of John McLaughlin will be "assumed" by James Blood Ulmer. The original studio sessions used multiple keyboards assigned to separate channels. This was usually Joe Zawinul on the left and Chick Corea on the right, although two tracks, Zawinul's "Pharaoh's Dance" and Miles' "Spanish Key," included a third keyboard in the center, performed by Larry Young. The "revisitation" performance will involve multiple keyboards, all played by Marco Benevento. Bass (presumably electric) will be performed by Lonnie Plaxico. Finally, there is the battery. The original recording involved two drum sets, one on each channel, with Jack DeJohnette the only drummer playing on all tracks. These were then supplemented with other percussion instruments. The "revisitation" performance will feature Cindy Blackman on a drum set and Adam Rudolph handling other percussion. It is clear that a lot of thought has gone into translating this studio recording experience into a performance experience, and the results are bound to be exciting.
The Bitches Brew Revisited concert will take place on October 29 and 8 PM. The venue will be the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre at 3301 Lyon Street. This is a large space that should serve the "electric" sound of the instrumentation particularly suitably. Ticket prices are $25, $45, and $65. Tickets may be ordered through the event page for this concert on the SFJAZZ Web site. SFJAZZ may also be reached by telephone at 866-920-5299.
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