Honoring, Not Imitating, Miles Davis’ Classic Sound

Miles Davis has always been tricky territory for trumpet players. His sound, his manner, his sheer musical presence as an instrumentalist is so clear, so definitive that players who adopt a similar approach run the constant risk of not always flattering comparisons. Wallace Roney, for example, a fine artist in his own right, has often received less credit than he deserves simply because his style is so parallel to that of Davis.

So Mark Isham deserves, at the very least, a badge for courage for recording an album titled “Miles Remembered: The Silent Way Project,” due for release on Columbia on Tuesday.

But Isham--a well-established film composer as well, who has scored more than 50 features, including the Oscar-nominated music for “A River Runs Through It”--prefers to view the recording as a Davis-inspired project rather than a tribute.

“If I’d thought, upfront, that I was going to be presenting my view of Miles to the world,” he says, “it probably never would have happened. But it really came about as a working project when I was trying to find a focus for doing some playing that would get me away from film scoring and back to my jazz trumpet.”

Isham got together with a few similarly oriented players and began to spontaneously explore some of the music from Davis’ electric period.

“For me, that music was my grist for the mill when I was coming out of high school,” he says. “It was cutting-edge stuff for me at the time when I was figuring out what jazz was all about, as influential to me as learning Beatles or Hendrix’s tunes was for guitar players.”

After running the material down over a period of months at the Baked Potato, Isham began to make live recordings, initially expecting nothing more than personal documentation of the gigs.

“But pretty soon,” he notes, “we had a collection of tracks that we thought sounded good. And maybe most important of all, they didn’t feel, to us at least, like a Miles simulation. That would have been a disaster. What we wanted to do was simply what Miles always insisted upon with his players--find our own voices. And I hope, and think, that’s what we’ve done.”

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Catching the Moment. The great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson often deferred discussing the technical details of his art, stressing instead the importance of capturing the “moment.” No one has accomplished that task with jazz performers better than veteran photographer William Claxton, who consistently manages to illuminate the lives and the music-making of jazz artists. “I guess,” explains Claxton, “you could say I listen with my eyes.”

On Thursday, an exhibition of Claxton’s photos will open at the Fahey/Klein Gallery, highlighting images from his new book, “Jazz Seen” (Taschen). A reception for the photographer will be held from 7 to 9 p.m., and the exhibition runs through July 10.

* “Jazz Seen,” the photographs of William Claxton. The Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 N. La Brea Ave. Thursday, 7-9 p.m. Continuing through July 10. Info: (323) 934-2250.

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On Record. Blue Note has released six albums as part of its RVG Edition, dedicated to music recorded by now-legendary audio engineer Rudy Van Gelder between 1957 and 1964. Each captures an artist at a prime stage in his career, and in sum the six releases--all remastered by Van Gelder--define the bristling, straight-ahead-with-tinges-of- avant-garde music that was being produced on the Blue Note label at the time.

The albums are Donald Byrd’s “A New Perspective,” Tony Williams’ “Lifetime,” Johnny Griffin’s “A Blowin’ Session,” Freddie Hubbard’s “Hub-Tones,” Andrew Hill’s “Point of Departure” and Wayne Shorter’s “Ju-Ju.”

32 Jazz’s continuing excavation of the Atlantic Jazz catalog has produced a group of previously out-of-print classics available this month. They include Oscar Brown’s “Movin’ On” (with his at-the-time controversial “A Ladies Man”), underrated pianist Ray Brown’s solo “Alone at Montreux,” and Gary Burton’s “Alone at Last,” with the vibist playing solo and overdubbing electric piano and organ.

The release also includes a pair of two-CD albums: Les McCann and the Mitchell-Ruff trio with “20 Special Fingers” with McCann’s “Much Les” and Mitchell-Ruff’s “The Catbird Seat”; and Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Yusef Lateef with “Separate but Equal,” including Kirk’s “Case of the 30-Sided Dream in Audio Color” and Lateef’s “Part of the Search.”

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Riffs. The Playboy Jazz Festival has announced that this year’s event will be dedicated to the memory of singer Joe Williams. . . . The Stan Kenton boosters are back again. The ninth annual Kenton Clan Party features an all-star band completely consisting of former Kenton sidemen, playing the arrangements of Bill Holman, Bill Russo, Gerry Mulligan, Pete Rugolo and others. Sunday at the Holiday Inn in Monrovia. Info: (626) 793-1477. . . .

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Tito Puente and his Latin Jazz Ensemble have been added to the Hollywood Bowl summer schedule. They will appear with John Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in “Tropicana!” on July 30 and 31. . . . Drummer Earl Palmer, 74, who has probably recorded with more acts than anyone in history (from Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra to Jimmy Durante and the Monkees), is taking up residence on Tuesday nights at Rix Restaurant in Santa Monica. “Tuesday Night Sessions” at the venue will feature an opening set by Palmer, pianist George Gaffney and bassist Ernie McDaniel, followed by jam sessions with select guest players. Info: (310) 656-9688. . . . Has anyone else noticed how much Allen Iverson, the NBA’s scoring leader and all-star guard for the Philadelphia 76ers, resembles a young Miles Davis?