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(More customer reviews)75 minutes in length approximately. The sound is very good-especially considering the year (1967) it was recorded. There's a very slight flat, distant sound overall, but nothing to worry about unless you're a true audiophile. There's also a couple of sonic "glitches", but they're of short duration. The booklet has a nice atmospheric color photo on the front and back, and a great two page spread photo of Davis playing his horn inside the booklet. There are two pages of quotes by Davis from "The Autobiography", and two pages of notes by Mike Potts concerning the band and the '67 European tour. Personnel are listed on the back, along with concert dates, song titles, lengths, and composer (s).
This wonderful group (perhaps Davis' second greatest), consisting of: Davis-trumpet. Wayne Shorter-tenor sax, Herbie Hancock-piano, Ron Carter-bass, and Tony Williams-drums, is the same group that Davis used on the albums "E.S.P.", "Miles Smiles", "Sorcerer", "Nefertiti", "Miles In The Sky", and "Filles de Kilimanjaro". All these albums were recorded in the years 1965-68-obviously a fertile period for some great music.
This period in Davis' career shows him turning from strictly acoustic jazz, into a harder based sound. The combination of newly arranged tracks and older standards was a sure sign that Davis was changing and assimilating new ideas into his music. Davis was beginning to tire of playing the same old tunes and wanted to play tunes that never seemed to make it to the concert stage. While the bands music was changing and growing on albums, audiences wanted only to hear the familiar tunes from the past.
The first concert takes place in Stockholm, Sweden. The compositions are-"Agitation" (Davis), "Footprints" (Shorter), "Around Midnight" (Monk), and "Gingerbread Boy/The Theme" (Jimmy Heath/Davis). These are all very fine tracks, the excitement from the band is palpable-they were excited to play this (then) newer style of jazz, nor just the same old standards they had been playing. It's difficult to pick out any one track above the others. The bands playing, individually, and as a group is simply great. Perhaps Heath's composition, not being as well known as the other tracks, might be the standout-but only by a slim margin. All the tracks from this concert are fairly long, giving individual band members a chance to solo as well as interact with the group.
The second concert, from Karlsruhe, Germany, one week later is the equal to what came before. The compositions are-"Agitation", "Footprints", "I Fall in Love too Easily" (Cahn-Styne), "Walkin'" (Carpenter), "Gingerbread Boy", and "The Theme". In a nutshell, this concert is every bit as good as the previous one. The band, both individually, and together play jazz on such a high level that its difficult to remember they were playing almost every night as part of the "Newport Jazz Festival in Europe". The group's creativity remained on a high level throughout this series of concerts, and I only wish I could have been sitting in the audience, listening to jazz played by a group of master musicians (especially Shorter and Williams) at the top of their game. This release will give you a good indication of just what went down on two nights in Europe, all those years ago.
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The group present on these two outstanding concerts (Sweden and Germany, 1967) marked the turning point between acoustic and electric Miles.At the time of this '67 European tour, the formation as a whole had been together for just one year and, although a new trend is evident and some tunes prelude a more advanced phase, they coexist with old standards like 'I Fall In Love Too Easily' and 'Around Midnight' as well as some of Miles' all-time favorites like 'Walkin''. 12 tracks total. Gambit.
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