Miles Davis / Gil Evans - Porgy and Bess (1969 Japanese CBS/Sony Vinyl LP)

Miles Davis / Orchestra Under the Direction of Gil Evans - Porgy and Bess | Vinyl LP - 1969 Japanese CBS/Sony Reissue (SONP-50148, SX68 Sound)

• The second Davis/Evans orchestral collaboration, an entirely instrumental reimagining of Gershwin's opera with brass-heavy arrangements that emphasise dark, minor-key textures over the source material's lyricism
• Recorded across four sessions in the summer of 1958 at Columbia 30th Street Studio, with Cannonball Adderley, four trumpeters, three trombonists, three French hornists, Bill Barber's tuba and Paul Chambers's bass
• Japanese CBS/Sony pressing with Roy DeCarava cover photography, SX68 Sound mastering

Miles Davis recorded Porgy and Bess at Columbia's 30th Street Studio, a converted church in Manhattan, across four dates in July and August 1958. He was between Milestones and Kind of Blue, leading one of the strongest small groups in jazz history, and Gil Evans channelled that confidence into orchestral arrangements that sound nothing like a Broadway adaptation. The pieces flow into one another without pause, and Evans' writing is weighted toward the lower brass: French horns from Gunther Schuller, Julius Watkins and Willie Ruff, Bill Barber's tuba, Dick Hixon's bass trombone and Danny Banks' bass clarinet. The mood is melancholy and the minor keys predominate. "The Buzzard Song" opens with an emotive bass and tuba duet before Davis enters on flugelhorn, and the first side moves through "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" (with Jimmy Cobb on drums replacing Philly Joe Jones for this track) and the racing "Gone" into the album's most famous moment: a compact, unhurried "Summertime" where Davis plays the melody with a hipness that strips away all sentimentality. "Bess, Oh Where's My Bess" closes Side A as one of Davis's most emotionally direct ballad performances.

Side B opens with "Prayer (Oh Doctor Jesus)", where Davis's muted trumpet is surrounded by Evans' scored responses from the ensemble, the brass answering each phrase. "Fishermen, Strawberry, and Devil Crab" features some of Danny Banks' finest alto flute work, and "My Man's Gone Now" stretches to six minutes as the longest track, Davis building his solo with a deliberateness. "It Ain't Necessarily So" swings harder than most of the album, and "Here Come De Honey Man" is a brief, eighty-second interlude before "I Love You, Porgy" arrives as the record's tenderest moment. "There's a Boat That's Leaving Soon for New York" closes with an urgency that pulls the album toward its end without resolving the tension Evans has maintained throughout. Cannonball Adderley's alto saxophone is woven into the ensemble texture rather than featured as a soloist, and the effect is a record that sounds less like a big band and more like a single instrument with many voices.

This is the 1969 Japanese reissue on CBS/Sony (SONP-50148), manufactured in Tokyo with SX68 Sound mastering.