The Best Indo-Jazz Fusion album in recent times !

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	• Miles from India (TWO CD SET) Gary Bartz, Ron Carter, ... FOUR QUARTERS ENT, 2008 average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Sketches of Excellence

Miles Davis passed away in 1991, but his majesty has lived on through any number of reissues, boxed sets of classic sessions and the reinterpretation of his music in a variety of settings.

This set - placing Miles in a World Music context - is sweeping in scoop and breathtaking in sound. The project was overseen by producer Bob Belden and co-arranged by Louiz Banks, who also performed on keyboards.

Utilizing classical and jazz artists from India and musicians who mostly performed with Miles during his "electric" years, the 12 numbers - which include In a Spanish Key, Silent Way, Jean Pierre and Miles Runs the Voodoo Down - are powerfully presented on an illuminated landscape that subtly changes with each listening.

But it's the title track - composed, produced and performed by guitarist John McLaughlin with U. Shrinivas on electric mandolin, Louiz Banks on piano and Sikkil Gurucharan on vocals - that merges the sketches of excellence of the past with the brilliance of the present.

The project is not just a tribute to the genius of Miles, but an absolute gem in the art of making modern music.

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Amazing Indian Improvisation

Amazing work of fusion the boss would have been proud of.

'So What' has always been my favourite and the way it has been improvised in this CD is just marvellous.

For fans of Shakti there is 'Miles from India' with jaming by the dynamic Shankar Mahadevan and the amiable John Maclauglin.

Truly amazing album in the league of Bitches Brew.

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The Best Indo-Jazz Fusion album in recent times !

I am usually ambivalent of this genre of music.Fusion albums can be either superb or very banal.For example compare this release with "Floating Point" the latest album by John Mclaughlin.I was utterly disapponted.It has absolutely no new ideas and is banal at it's best.Interestingly, both albums have a lot of musicians in common - Luiz Banks,Ranjit Barot, Shankar Mahadevan...

This album is a totally different cup of tea.It works and like how.Of course the premise to begin with, is brilliant.And then the musicians are on fire and you can actually feel that on every track.

All the songs on the album are superb, but if I have to pick a favourite it would be Jean-Pierre, the last track on the first CD.

Highly recommended.

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Truly enjoyable.

Davis may have died in 1991, but he lives on in reissues, tributes and memorial albums. You'd think there was nothing left to say, but this cross-cultural collaboration between original Davis sidemen, including Chick Corea and John McLaughlin, and Indian classical musicians is fresh, unexpected and indispensable.

"A Cross-Cultural Celebration of the Music of Miles Davis," it says, in which prominent Indian musos get down and dirty with prominent ex-Davis sidemen in... well, you've read the subtitle already. And guess what? It works, by and large. Miles always had a thing for Indian music and Davis-heads will recall his expansive use of tablas and sitar on various Sixties and Seventies records.

"Miles From India" is a remarkable collection of music featuring some of the best musicians of contemporary American Jazz, Indian Jazz, and Classical Indian music coming together to honour one of the most brilliant composers of our time.

Miles Davis not only created remarkable music on his own, but he provided the inspiration for some of modern Jazz's best and most creative minds.

Everybody from Wayne Shorter to Chick Corea and John McLaughlin played with and were influenced by Miles and his innovations. While some of them might have pushed the envelope of fusion much further then he did, he was the one who put their feet on that path.

It is only fitting, therefore, that a collection of music in his honour is such a bold attempt at fusing two such disparate types of music. The fact that it is so successful is surely a testimony to his genius as a composer.

"Miles From India" is not just an example of how to properly bring East and West together musically, it is as magnificent collection of Jazz music that you are liable to find anywhere these days.

Material is culled from both acoustic and electric eras: "So What", "In a Silent Way", "All Blues" "Jean Pierre" etc - and the approach is about as respectful of the original idioms as it could be. Highly enjoyable.

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Wishes do come true.

i've always liked Indian music, prob comes from the Beatles period, when they were into their Yogi friend & Ravi Shankar.
I've always been a big Miles fan too, from when my father & his drummer brother played Sketches of Spain, non stop, when it was first released about 50 years ago.
So to have a group of Indian musicians playing with some of the people I see mentioned in the small print on the CD jacket-covers of my Miles CDs, well I think, maybe they made this double CD just for me.
I saw Gary Bartz at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival 5 or 6 years ago & have been a big fan ever since, so loved the tracks on Miles from India that he plays on.
I rang the DJ who does a World Music programme late on Sunday nights on a subscriber radio station last week, as he had been playing some Indian music, lots of tablas,etc, that night & recomended he get a copy of M from I & play it on his programme. Be interesting to see if he does so tonight.
Thank you Amazon for recomending it to me.It is currently my favourite CD.
Regards, Geoff R from Melbourne Australia.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

In a startlingly original recreation of music associated
with jazz legend Miles Davis, producer-archivist Bob
Belden, renowned for his Grammy Award-winning
reissue work on a series of Miles Davis boxed sets for
Sony/Columbia, along with co-arranger Louiz Banks
(celebrated keyboardist from India), has recast familiar
themes from such landmark recordings as Bitches
Brew, In A Silent Way, and Kind of Blue with an East
Meets West sensibility on Miles...From India. An
incredibly ambitious project involving two dozen
musicians from two separate continents recording in
studios around the world, Miles...From India is a cross-cultural summit meeting that puts a provocative pan-global spin on such Miles
classics as All Blues, Spanish Key, So What, It s About That Time and Jean Pierre.
Sitar and tablas, ghatam and khanjira, mridangam and Carnatic violin blend seamlessly with muted trumpet and saxophones, screaming
electric guitar and grooving electric bass lines, piano, upright bass and drums on this profound fusion of Indian classical and American
jazz. Recorded in Mumbai and Madras, India and New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the music on Miles...From India was performed by
classical and jazz musicians from India with the addition of musicians who have recorded or performed with Miles Davis over the span of
five decades.
The Miles alumni included on the sessions are saxophonists Dave Liebman (1972-74) and Gary Bartz (1970-71), guitarists Mike Stern
(1981-84), Pete Cosey (1973-76) and John McLaughlin (1969-72), bassists Ron Carter (1963-69), Michael Henderson (1970-76), Marcus
Miller (1981-1984), Benny Rietveld (1987-91), keyboardists Chick Corea (1968-72), Adam Holzman (1985-87) and Robert Irving III (1980-
88), drummers Jimmy Cobb (1958-63), Leon 'Ndugu' Chancler (1971), Lenny White (1969) and Vince Wilburn (1981, 1984-1987) and
tabla player Badal Roy (1972-3). The Indian contingent is represented by keyboardist Louiz Banks, drummer Gino Banks, American-born
alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, sitarist Ravi Chari, Vikku Vinayakram (a charter member of Shakti) on ghatam, V. Selvaganesh (a
member of Shakti and Remember Shakti) on khanjira, U. Shrinivas (from Remember Shakti) on electric mandolin, Brij Narain on sarod,
Dilshad Khan on sarangi, Sridhar Parthasarathy on mridangam, Taufiq Qureshi and A. Sivamani on percussion, Kala Ramnath on Carnatic
violin, Rakesh Chaurasia on flute and Shankar Mahadevan & Sikkil Gurucharan on Indian classical vocals.

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