Echoes of Spain: From Segovia and Sabicas to Miles Davis and John Coltrane / Various (CD) - CD

Details: 3CD Box set examining the influence on modern artists of the music of Spain. With a detailed 36-page booklet tracing it's heritage. 'Sketches of Spain' was the third album where arranger Gil Evans was called upon to create an entire sound world for Miles Davis. Spanish themes had been in evidence on the first of the series, ('Miles Ahead') but 'Sketches... ' delivered a complete Spanish musical landscape. A formidable challenge that nevertheless proved to be within the powers of Davis and Evans at their artistic peak. In Downbeat Magazine, Bill Mathieu wrote: "This record is one of the most important musical triumphs our century has yet produced. It brings together under the same aegis two realms that in the past have often worked against one another - the world of the heart and the world of the mind... what is involved here is the unison of ideas with emotion, pre- composition with improvisation, discipline with spontaneity... If there is to be a new jazz, a shape of things to come, then this is the beginning. " Evans and Davis were scarcely the first modern musicians to be captivated by the mysteries of Spanish music. Davis (with the pianist Bill Evans) had already created the shimmering 'Flamenco Sketches' for the imperious 'Kind Of Blue' (commercially, the most successful jazz album of all time), while John Coltrane's inspired response to these explorations would be the labyrinthine, raga-like 'Olé'. Maurice Ravel's Spanish heritage is revealed by his Bolero, inspired by the minimalist repetition that is at the heart of Flamenco and much admired by such pop luminaries as Beatles producer George Martin; Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention and the late Jeff Beck ('Beck's Bolero'); while Claude Debussy sculpted the sensuous sonic-postcard that is Iberia, the central panel of the 'Images' triptych. Django Reinhardt played the introspective 'Echoes of Spain' to the master guitarist Andrés Segovia, who, dazzled, demanded a score, only for Django to shrug that the piece was, "merely an improvisation"