Porgy & Bess [Original recording remastered, Extra tracks]

Miles Davis | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 25, 1997)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered, Extra tracks
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B000002AH6
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,236 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #8 in Music > Jazz > Orchestral Jazz
  • #24 in Music > Jazz > Swing Jazz > Contemporary Big Band
  • #24 in Music > Jazz > Cool Jazz

Track Listings

1. Buzzard Song

2. Bess, You Is My Woman Now

3. Gone

4. Gone, Gone, Gone

5. Summertime

6. Oh Bess, Oh Where's My Bess?

7. Prayer (Oh Doctor Jesus)

8. Fisherman, Strawberry and Devil Crab

9. My Man's Gone Now

10. It Ain't Necessarily So

11. Here Come de Honey Man

12. I Loves You, Porgy

13. There's a Boat That's Leaving Soon for New York

14. I Loves You, Porgy [Take 1, Second Version][*]

15. Gone [Take 4][*]

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Take George Gershwin's Porgy & Bess, add Miles Davis and arranger Gil Evans, and what do you get? A classic jazz album that--despite the fact that the material has been rendered almost overly familiar due to countless interpretations--still sounds remarkably fresh four decades after its initial release. Miles' soft yet piercing trumpet style is perfectly suited to Gershwin's melancholy melodies, Evans' musical direction of his 18-piece orchestra is impeccable, and their version of "Summertime" may well be the finest ever waxed. Davis and Evans teamed up for several recordings after this one (including the landmark Sketches of Spain), but Porgy & Bess still stands as one of their most successful collaborations. --Dan Epstein

Product Description

DAVIS MILES PORGY AND BESS

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No more superlatives can be found on ANY review!, February 18, 2001

By 

Eric V. Moye (New York, by way of Dallas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Porgy & Bess (Audio CD)

Look closely to see what is being written about Miles Davis' Porgy & Bess, and see how sometimes words fail us all. You will find words like: "Must-have", "best" superb" and the like. But they simply cannot do justice to this fabulous piece of music.

This may be the best collaboration of Davis and Gil Evans. When you add the gifts that they have shown on their other work to a combination with the Brothers Gershwin, you understandibly come up with something splendid, notwithstanding the fact that Gershwin and Davis could not have been different sociologically as they could have been.

The melodies here are comfortably familiar to anyone with more than a passing knowledge of American music, because they have been done so often by such a diverse group of performers. However, the minimalist playing of Miles Davis, combined with the musical tapestry created by Evans makes this wonderful music new again.

Hearing the trumpet of Miles Davis in the familiar strains of "Summertime" would make both Louis Armstrong and even Gabriel put down their horns and say "wow".

No music collection can be considered complete without this epic.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling., March 6, 2001

By 

Tom (Palatine, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Porgy & Bess (Audio CD)

I write this review as a confessed jazz amateur.

That said, this is some of the most beautiful music I am aware of .

Miles Davis employs a sensativity and subtlty that defy desription.

I would not be the first of his fans to be awed by his almost pervasive minimalism, but I am constantly chilled (in a most positive way) by the startling sound that appears from the black silence he paints.

Samuel Beckett once wrote that "...every word is a stain on silence and nothingness..." certainly Davis has taken this thought to heart.

Like a negative contour sketch that highlights the empty space, Davis dances around the silence, telling only enough of a musical story to leave you begging for more.

Whether or not "Porgy and Bess," sounds as Gershwin intended is largely irrelavent, because it sounds very much as Davis intended, and that makes this a fabulous recording.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark variations on a theme by Gershwin., August 29, 2001

By 

darragh o'donoghue - See all my reviews

This review is from: Porgy & Bess (Audio CD)

For centuries, it was common for classical composers to display their virtuosity by creating variations on famous operas, such as Beethoven on 'The Magic Flute', or Liszt on Bellini. This lost art in the 20th century has been taken over by jazz musicians, the opera of choice being, naturally enough, Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess', that innovative explosion of classical and jazz.
Miles Davis' and Gil Evans' restructuring the narrative or song order of 'Porgy and Bess' is the most obvious hint of the total reworking and reimagining they effect here. Indeed, this recording is closer to Ravel than Gershwin - as in a piece like 'La Valse', popular material retains its points of reference, but is put through a deconstructing blender, dismantled, fractured, restructured. Like Ravel, Evans' orchestration is not lush, soft or soothing, but brittle, jerky and piercing, with Miles' understated, melancholy playing centring the work's heart. Songs from the opera which are upbeat, poppy, such as 'It Ain't Necessarily So', become expansive, ruminative; while tragic, deeply sorrowful songs, like the lament 'Gone', become in Evans' hands a propulsive, rhythmic monster. This is 'Porgy and Bess' shot in film noir, full of menace, anxiety, dark colour - the 'Buzzard song' is an appropriately unseeting, dread-ful opening. The opera's best moment, is appropriately this album's too: the love duet, 'Bess You is my woman now', expanding on the desperation and hints of desolation behind the warmth of the original.