Complete In a Silent Way Sessions [Box set] [Original recording remastered]

Amazon.com
Recorded and released in 1969, In a Silent Way was one of Miles Davis's most mysterious and elusive efforts. That was not only because the album, boasting one long track on each side, was so austerely understated, but also because it stood apart from the music that preceded it, the music the trumpeter was performing in concert, and the revolution that followed--a.k.a. Bitches Brew. Making use of multiple keyboardists--Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea on electric piano and Joe Zawinul on organ--the trumpeter multiplies tones and melody lines and complicates textures. His mold-breaking band, also including Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone, Tony Williams on drums, and John McLaughlin on guitar, dips into rock and R&B, gospel and classical, electronics and creative editing.

The three-disc, misleadingly titled Complete In a Silent Way Sessions gathers a brace of material recorded during the months leading up to the making of the title classic, when Davis was making the transition from his great acoustic quintet (including Hancock, Shorter, and Williams) to more populous electric units, as well as formalizing his involvement in rock. It includes two songs from Filles de Kilimanjaro that were rudely left off the Miles Davis Quintet 1965-68 box set because they were performed not by the classic quintet but with new members Corea and Dave Holland. Strong subsequent efforts by the revised quintet not released until years later on odds and ends collections. You may drift off while listening to bonus "footage," including rehearsals for Silent Way, but two previously unreleased tunes command attention: the easy and sprawling 27-minute construct, "The Ghetto Walk," which reflects Miles's interest in Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, and "Early Minor," a Zawinul composition warmed by a Spanish sunrise. The extensive notes are informative, and the packaging, as always with the ongoing Davis reissue series, is classy. --Lloyd Sachs

Complete In a Silent Way Sessions,Miles Davis,Sony,Avant-Garde Jazz,Box Sets (Audio Only),Fusion,Jazz,Jazz Music,Jazz-Rock,Pop

Average customer rating: The soundtrack to a religious experience Maybe the greatest Miles ensemble ever . . .

The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions Miles Davis Manufacturer: Sony ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Avant Garde & Free Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music General | Jazz | Styles | Music Jazz Fusion | Jazz | Styles | Music Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music Similar Items: Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (August 1969-February 1970) The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions The Miles Davis Quintet, 1965-68: The Complete Columbia Studio The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 The Complete Columbia Recordings: Miles Davis & John Coltrane ASIN: B0002199G8 Release Date: 2004-05-11

Tracks:

1. Mademoiselle Mabry
2. Frelon Brun
3. Two Faced
4. Dual Mr. Anthony Tillmon Williams Process
5. Splash
6. Splashdown

Tracks:

1. Ascent
2. Directions I
3. Directions II
4. Shhh/Peaceful
5. In A Silent Way (Rehearsal)
6. In A Silent Way
7. It's About That Time

Tracks:

1. The Ghetto Walk
2. Early Minor
3. Shhh/Peaceful (LP Version)
4. In A Silent Way/It's About That Time (LP Version)

Customer Reviews:

The soundtrack to a religious experience.......2006-09-25

While I would like to provide a balanced review of this box set, I simply can not. I also want to avoid using clichés but "The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions" is one of the world's greatest recordings. It would seem that such a statement must surely be victim to hyperbole. Without overstatement, my case unapologetically stands. Once the listener hears a work of this lofty caliber, words become meaningless. This box set lives somewhere beneath a wave of adjectives like "greatest ever" "amazing" and "un-friggin' believable." This was a unique and all too brief time period for Miles. Before the gauntlet was thrown down with "[...] Brew," this was Miles' light trip music. Psychedelica is omnipresent but never overpowering. This album occupies a special place that is triangulated between rock, jazz and trance music. Either this is music to contemplate at one o'clock in the morning or this is the soundtrack to a profound meditation. The original LP seems like the "In A Silent Way" starter kit compared to this full-blown box set. Indeed, this release makes the original seem painfully short since the vibe and atmosphere is consistent. The inclusion of "Dual Mr. Anthony Tillmon Williams Process" is especially appreciated. The listener must ultimately ask, so how can music be played in a silent way? Miles not only contemplates this zen paradox, he finds the path and takes us along on his vision quest. Get "The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions" and take a trip with Miles Davis on his most spiritual journey.

Maybe the greatest Miles ensemble ever . . ........2006-03-08

The initial Miles Davis - John McLaughlin collaboration at the peak of its perfection - with help from Tony Williams - Wayne Shorter -Ron Carter - Dave Holland - Joe Zawinul - Herbie Hancock - Chick Corea and others. The set represents the group at the end of its magical late 60's run of great studio sessions and on the verge of the wild fusion-funk period of larger, louder sound. In A Silent Way retains that particular introspective pathos and the intimacy of a smaller ensemble that helped make Miles' music singularly definitive . . . and here - the bluesy echoes mesh perfectly with Miles' new found discovery of electricity - moments before his music would spin completely off the edge - forever - a classic moment in jazz - captured here in all its precarious balance, delicacy, and depth.

Average customer rating: ABSOLUTE Must Have For Miles Collectors!!! The soundtrack to a religious experience One of Miles' More Complete "Complete" Sets You'll Want to Hear the Whole Thing Miles' best

Complete In a Silent Way Sessions Miles Davis Manufacturer: Sony ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Avant Garde & Free Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music General | Jazz | Styles | Music Jazz Fusion | Jazz | Styles | Music General | Jazz | Box Sets | Stores | Music Similar Items: The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings 1963-1964 The Complete Columbia Recordings: Miles Davis & John Coltrane ASIN: B00005QGAS Release Date: 2001-10-23

Tracks:

1. Mademoiselle Mabry
2. Frelon Brun
3. Two Faced
4. Dual Mr. Anthony Tillmon Williams Process
5. Splash
6. Splashdown

Tracks:

1. Ascent
2. Directions I
3. Directions II
4. Shhh/Peaceful
5. In A Silent Way (rehearsal)
6. In A Silent Way
7. It's About That Time

Tracks:

1. The Ghetto Walk
2. Early Minor
3. Shhh/Peaceful (LP Version)
4. In A Silent Way/It's About That Time (LP Version)

Amazon.com

Recorded and released in 1969, In a Silent Way was one of Miles Davis's most mysterious and elusive efforts. That was not only because the album, boasting one long track on each side, was so austerely understated, but also because it stood apart from the music that preceded it, the music the trumpeter was performing in concert, and the revolution that followed--a.k.a. Bitches Brew. Making use of multiple keyboardists--Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea on electric piano and Joe Zawinul on organ--the trumpeter multiplies tones and melody lines and complicates textures. His mold-breaking band, also including Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone, Tony Williams on drums, and John McLaughlin on guitar, dips into rock and R&B, gospel and classical, electronics and creative editing.

The three-disc, misleadingly titled Complete In a Silent Way Sessions gathers a brace of material recorded during the months leading up to the making of the title classic, when Davis was making the transition from his great acoustic quintet (including Hancock, Shorter, and Williams) to more populous electric units, as well as formalizing his involvement in rock. It includes two songs from Filles de Kilimanjaro that were rudely left off the Miles Davis Quintet 1965-68 box set because they were performed not by the classic quintet but with new members Corea and Dave Holland. Strong subsequent efforts by the revised quintet not released until years later on odds and ends collections. You may drift off while listening to bonus "footage," including rehearsals for Silent Way, but two previously unreleased tunes command attention: the easy and sprawling 27-minute construct, "The Ghetto Walk," which reflects Miles's interest in Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, and "Early Minor," a Zawinul composition warmed by a Spanish sunrise. The extensive notes are informative, and the packaging, as always with the ongoing Davis reissue series, is classy. --Lloyd Sachs

Customer Reviews:

ABSOLUTE Must Have For Miles Collectors!!!.......2007-02-11

This collection is a must have if you are a Miles Davis Collector or a fan of the electric era. There's a lot of new music here to explore, including some tracks with drummer Joe Chambers. High points from the previously unreleased stuff includes Joe Zawinul compositions Ascent, Directions, and something called Early Minor. Miles Davis's Ghetto Walk, a 26 minute piece is very much a missing link between Filles De Kilamajaro and Bitches Brew. There's also a "new' piece called "Splashdown", I'm unsure if that has been released elsewhere... perhaps on "Directions"? If you own Filles De Kilamanjaro, Water Babies, and In A Silent Way you will definitely duplicate some tracks but there is a lot of new stuff here. You also get to hear the raw, unedited recordings that Teo Macero used to create In A Silent Way and finally, you get the entire In A Silent Way release. Another selling point is that you get to hear some new material by quintet that featured Corea and Holland.

This is money well spent if you are a Miles collector or a big fan of Miles' work between 1967 and 1972.

The soundtrack to a religious experience.......2006-11-10

While I would like to provide a balanced review of this box set, I simply can not. I also want to avoid using clichés but "The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions" is one of the world's greatest recordings. It would seem that such a statement must surely be victim to hyperbole. Without overstatement, my case unapologetically stands. Once the listener hears a work of this lofty caliber, words become meaningless. This box set lives somewhere beneath a wave of adjectives like "greatest ever" "amazing" and "un-friggin' believable." This was a unique and all too brief time period for Miles. Before the gauntlet was thrown down with "Bitches Brew," this was Miles' light trip music. Psychedelica is omnipresent but never overpowering. This album occupies a special place that is triangulated between rock, jazz and trance music. Either this is music to contemplate at one o'clock in the morning or this is the soundtrack to a profound meditation. The original LP seems like the "In A Silent Way" starter kit compared to this full-blown box set. Indeed, this release makes the original seem painfully short since the vibe and atmosphere is consistent. The inclusion of "Dual Mr. Anthony Tillmon Williams Process" is especially appreciated. The listener must ultimately ask, so how can music be played in a silent way? Miles not only contemplates this zen paradox, he finds the path and takes us along on his vision quest. Get "The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions" and take a trip with Miles Davis on his most spiritual journey.

One of Miles' More Complete "Complete" Sets.......2006-04-27

Unlike THE COMPLETE BITCHES BREW SESSIONS, which actually contains only the BITCHES BREW album as released and pads it out with subsequent recordings (many of them rehearsal jams never intended for release), THE COMPLETE IN A SILENT WAY SESSIONS delivers on the promise of its title by offering both the unedited studio workouts from which Miles' proto-fusion classic was assembled AND the clipped-and-pasted album itself. Since all of this material would run just a few minutes more than a single CD, some padding has of course been done here as well - this time in the opposite direction, with the final two tracks from the trumpeter's previous album FILLES DE KILIMANJARO (left off the QUINTET 1965-1968 box set because they were recorded after bassist Ron Carter and pianist Herbie Hancock had left the band), the original studio versions of Joe Zawinul's "Directions" (which would become Miles' signature concert opener for a number of years) and all the other tracks and jams which Davis and Company recorded during the six months before IN A SILENT WAY filling out the three-disc package. The extra tracks make good sense in this case, however, since they fill the gap between the last days of Miles' classic mid-sixties quintet and the more wholeheartedly rock-influenced turn the Maestro would begin taking with IN A SILENT WAY, and most of them are in fact of releasable quality. While casual fans (or even hardcores of the not-particularly-hard variety) would undoubtedly do better to simply grab the remastered discs of the albums themselves, tentative completists who've found the BITCHES BREW, JACK JOHNSON and CELLAR DOOR boxes to be just too damned much can rest assured that this is indeed one of Miles' more accessible "complete" compilations.

You'll Want to Hear the Whole Thing.......2005-12-08

This boxset actually works unlike the Jack Johnson set which has multiple takes of the same song and gets somewhat tedious. Not every piece on the box set is essential but still hearing the rough drafts for "In a Silent Way" and seeing how they were spliced together to complete the final product is fascinating. Teo Macero assembled a final product that was better than the sum of its parts (unlike the Live at Fillmore, clip job disaster). And while you're at it, this music has a mellow proto-ambient vibe without suffering from the aimless meandering that much fusion would suffer from. Its hard to believe that this is the same musician who would go on to make "On the Corner" (another favorite of mine) which is as harsh and edgy as this is peaceful but then again this is so far removed from "Kind of Blue" its unbelievable. The really excellent thing about this boxset is to see how Miles' music evolved. Its not like suddenly one day he decided to go electric. The different sessions show a gradual progression. However, this is no history lesson. The music sounds as fresh as the day it was made. This is the rosetta stone of Miles music because this is where his close minded jazz purists step off and his jazz-rock fans start when it reality it is classic jazz that was cutting edge at the time and still sounds pretty damn good.

Miles' best.......2005-11-09

This is simply Miles Davis best record in my opinion. It markes a completely new transition from the more traditional jazz he had been playing. He had started the process on Filles de Kilimajaro and would continue with Bitches Brew. When I bought this CD on a very expensive japanese import at the start of the CD era, I was completely blown away. The box set is simply splendid and provides you with more touttakes taht give you an insight in this turning point. It is not yet completely what we would later call jazz rock or fusion but a blend of styles taht is incredible in its scope. Strongly recommended.

Average customer rating:

Complete in a Silent Way Sessions (Vol 5) Miles Davis Manufacturer: Columbia ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Jazz | Styles | Music General | Pop | Styles | Music General | R&B | Styles | Music General | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music General | Soundtracks | Styles | Music ASIN: B000LA7LJM

Product Description

3 CD Box Set with Booklet. Volume 5 of a larger collection.

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