Miles Davis
The Complete Concert, My Funny Valentine and Four an More. My Funny Valentine

LA RECENSIONE

It's a February evening in the Year of Our Lord 1964. Miles steps onto a stage in New York. The second quintet. Need I say more, paradise.

Miles decides to start easy. My Funny Valentine. One of the most famous standards.

To start easy and a bit like a jerk. Chet Baker has been around for a while now. He plays My Funny Valentine. And he plays it like an angel. A damned angel, a fallen angel. But still an angel.

But Miles couldn't care less about how Chet plays it. He might play like an angel, but only because angels are white.

Miles, if he decides to play a standard, plays it like only he can. And everyone else - from then on - will try to play it like him. And they won't succeed.

Miles, the year 1964, a February evening, the second quintet, brings his mouth to the trumpet. He has decided to start easy. He has decided to start a bit like a jerk. He has decided - as always - to be Miles.

On the soft carpet designed by Hancock, at the beginning of the piece, if you listen closely, the first notes of the trumpet are a bit shaky. It's the interpretation, it's the pathos, they fit well, anyway.

Then, after five or six notes, on a simple ascending scale, he misses. He misses really badly, he doesn't hit the note. It doesn't come to him.

And for a second I imagine Herbie Hancock, George Coleman, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, looking at each other.

On a New York stage, a February evening in '64.

And they ask each other, with their eyes, what do we do now. And they answer, I don't know.

But it's just a moment, less than a second.

Miles finds that scale again and hits a liberating high note.

And when you listen closely, it almost seems like you can hear the sigh of relief from those next to him.

They start again, and it's wonderful. As always.

And after a while, you hear Miles who isn’t at his very best, getting a bit lost, not quite himself.

And before you know it, he's already bounced back. Throwing you those notes that only he can. That are like sculptures. Like a monument in marble.

So, for almost fifteen minutes. Tremors and sighs of relief, and wonders, and falls, and the strength to rise again.

In the end, I don't know if all of this is true, or if I've always just imagined it. For many years I've wondered what was up with Miles that February evening, on a New York stage, in nineteen-sixty-four.

Surely, in any case, that evening, Miles took My Funny Valentine, starting easy, starting a bit like a jerk, and turned it into something - for me - unforgettable.