Miles Davis Lost Quintet and Other Revolutionary Ensembles

Miles Davis's Bitches Brew is one of the most iconic albums in American music, the preeminent landmark and fertile seedbed of jazz-fusion. Fans have been fortunate in the past few years to gain access to Davis's live recordings from this time, when he was working with an ensemble that has come to be known as the Lost Quintet. In this book, jazz historian and musician Bob Gluck explores the performances of this revolutionary group Davis's first electric band to illuminate the thinking of one of our rarest geniuses and, by extension, the extraordinary transition in American music that he and his fellow players ushered in. Gluck listens deeply to the uneasy tension between this group's driving rhythmic groove and the sonic and structural openness, surprise, and experimentation they were always pushing toward. There he hears and outlines a fascinating web of musical interconnection that brings Davis's funk-inflected sensibilities into conversation with the avant-garde worlds that players like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane were developing.Going on to analyze the little-known experimental groups Circle and the Revolutionary Ensemble, Gluck traces deep resonances across a commercial gap between the celebrity Miles Davis and his less famous but profoundly innovative peers. The result is a deeply attuned look at a pivotal moment when once-disparate worlds of American music came together in explosively creative combinations.

"[The Miles Davis Lost Quintet and Other Revolutionary Ensembles] by Bob Gluck presents Miles by placing him at the center of a series of jazz revolutions." -- "la Lettura - Corriere della Sera (Translated from Italian)", "With this book, the publisher Quodlibet has enriched the 'Chorus' series with a new, precious piece ... Bob Gluck investigates this surprising sound season of Miles Davis without neglecting what, at the same time, was happening in the adjacent musical world, and never forgetting the equally surprising historical, political and social season to which Davis's experience was deeply anchored." -- "Strumenti & Musica (Translated from Italian)", "Gluck captures, from the brief period of the quintet, principles that become a sort of integrating background. These are useful to properly analyze an experience from which other musicians, all of them significant, drew upon ... it is also striking how much the socio-political churning and sounds of industrialized urban civilization impacted the development of the composing and improvising of the groups and subsequently carried forward by members of that quintet." -- "Buscadero (Translated from Italian)", "This is an incredible book, of rare excellence and beauty... I have read books of music criticism but none have ever attained such beauty. Any palate will easily find itself in these pages: the super-technical one, the curious one, even the one who knows nothing of that period. Superbly direct, scrupulously translated, with perfect narrative timing, and never a cloying use of technical terms, this book also includes a very accurate analytical index and bibliography. It is not easy to call an essay exciting, but this it is." -- "MinimAL (Translated from Italian)", "Overall his writing style aspires to, and regularly achieves, an informative blend of musical and cultural analysis that is meaningful to specialists without alienating non-musicians."-- "Notes"

Bob Gluck is a pianist, composer, and jazz historian, as well as professor of music and director of the Electronic Music Studio at the State University of New York, Albany. He is the author of You'll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band, also published by the University of Chicago Press.