Music of Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue'

An all-star band including saxophonist Javon Jackson, trumpet giant Eddie Henderson, and Miles Davis band alumnus Lenny White unite for concert #3 of the Miles Davis Centennial Celebration, looking back to the trumpeter’s epochal hard bop ensembles of the 50s and 60s. This salute to Miles’s hugely influential mid-career music includes material associated with his first quintet of the 1950s with John Coltrane and Red Garland, the iconic 1959 sextet session Kind of Blue, and the exploratory 1960s second quintet with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock featured on the Columbia Jazz masterpieces Miles Smiles, Nefertiti, and E.S.P., among others. 

Front and center on this night is trumpeter Eddie Henderson, a virtuoso influenced by Miles as a teenager, first meeting his idol at age seventeen. Known widely for his work with Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band of the early 1970s, he has released nearly 30 albums and is presently a member of The Cookers.  

Lenny White has been a consummate force in modern jazz since the late 1960s, appearing on Miles’s 1969 landmark Bitches Brew and working extensively as a member of Chick Corea’s fusion supergroup Return to Forever. He’s led seventeen sessions as a leader and recorded with Al Di Meila, Wallace Roney, Bobby Hutcherson, and others.

A veteran of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Javon Jackson has been a major voice in jazz since the early 1990s and issued 20 releases as a leader.