Miles Davis: Concierto de Aranjuez
(This is an edited transcript of Episode 20 of the Sounds Out of Time podcast. Here’s a playlist of most of the tracks featured.)
(This is an edited transcript of Episode 20 of the Sounds Out of Time podcast. Here’s a playlist of most of the tracks featured.)
I’m going to spend a couple episodes on the intersection of Spanish music and jazz. In the last episode on Bill Evans, I mentioned Miles Davis’s “Flamenco Sketches.” “Flamenco Sketches” pointed in a new direction, and then months later Miles began recording the album “Sketches of Spain” with arranger and composer Gil Evans and a small orchestra in addition to bassist Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Elvin Jones on percussion.
Jimmy Cobb just died at age 91 while I was developing this episode, the last surviving member of the first classic Miles quintet. He will be missed.
The first track on the album is the adagio section of “Concierto de Aranjuez,” a concerto for guitar and orchestra written by Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo in 1939. That composition is the subject of this Deep Listening session.
“Concierto de Aranjuez” has three movements to it: the opening “Allegro con spirito,” which is as bright as the title sounds, the “Adagio,” which is slower and more pensive, and then “Allegro gentile,” which is more up-tempo than the Adagio but mellower than the first movement. The Adagio is the most famous movement, and it has inspired several interpretations by jazz musicians over the years.
Let’s start with the main theme of the Adagio. This recording features guitarist Paco de Lucia performing with the Orquesta de Cadaques. As a flamenco artist de Lucia could play with blistering speed and attack, but his touch here is so soft (7:07–7:45).
Now let’s listen to Miles playing the same melody from “Sketches of Spain” (0:55–1:38).
Miles said about this melody, “The softer you play it, the stronger it gets.” That’s what we just heard.
I don’t love all 16 minutes of the track. Parts of the arrangement get either too loud and brassy or stray too far from the original composition for my tastes (8:14–8:27), but Miles’s playing throughout is dark and mournful, and really true to the spirit of Rodrigo. If you don’t like it the first time through, don’t give up. This track and the whole album grew on me with repeated listens. It’s a concept album.
Miles may have been the first jazz musician to find the inspiration in this piece to interpret it in his own way, but he wasn’t the last. Chick Corea used the beginning of the adagio as the introduction for his own composition “Spain,” which is probably his most famous piece. Here’s a performance from the 2018 San Sebastian Jazz Festival where he plays that opening melody, with John Patitucci on bass (2:19–2:45).
In his first recording of “Spain,” on the album “Light as a Feather” with the band Return to Forever, the arrangement jumped from the adagio feel to the rapid opening of “Spain,” and it created a real contrast (1:00–1:20).
If you like “Spain,” the guitarist Larry Coryell and Steve Khan did something different with it: they took the opening chords from the first movement of Rodrigo, the allegro con spirito, tweaked it a little bit, then juxtaposed that with Corea’s melody (0:00–0:40).
When I was sixteen, I couldn’t get enough of that.
But I digress. OK, back to the Rodrigo. The jazz interpretation of the adagio from Concierto de Aranjuez that’s a sleeper is by guitarist Jim Hall, from his 1975 album “Concierto.”
Start with the all-star lineup: Jim Hall on acoustic and electric guitars, Paul Desmond of “Take 5” fame on saxophone, Chet Baker on trumpet, Ron Carter on bass, Roland Hanna on piano, and Steve Gadd on drums. Here’s Hall playing the opening theme (0:05–0:45).
Like the castanets in the Miles recording, this version has a steady pulse behind the melody, which is not something I’ve heard in any classical recordings with guitar and orchestra.
This recording was produced by Creed Taylor for Taylor’s CTI label, and if you’re familiar with CTI recordings, there’s very much a smooth jazz aesthetic to them. It’s not really my thing, but you have to appreciate this band. The last 11 minutes of this track is basically a series of solos on the chord progression of the adagio set to a Latin beat. Here’s a little of Hall’s second solo, which is as tasteful as you’d expect (15:17–15:54).
The star of this Deep Listening session is Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” Miles Davis said, “After listening to it for a couple weeks, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”
The same thing happened to me recently, and I’m not complaining. Check out as many different recordings of it as you can. Listen to all three movements from beginning to end, not just the adagio. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.