Miles Davis - In A Silent Way (2015 Legacy/Columbia EU Reissue Vinyl LP)

Miles Davis - In A Silent Way | Vinyl LP - 2015 Legacy/Columbia Reissue 

• Miles Davis's 1969 landmark, recorded in a single session on 18 February 1969 at CBS 30th Street Studio in New York City, produced by Teo Macero; regarded as Davis's first fusion recording and the beginning of his electric period, with eight musicians including Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Josef Zawinul
• Two side-long pieces — "Shhh/Peaceful" and "In A Silent Way/It's About That Time"
  
• 2015 Legacy/Columbia EU reissue

Miles Davis recorded In A Silent Way in a single session on 18 February 1969 at CBS 30th Street Studio B in New York City. He brought eight musicians: Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone, John McLaughlin on electric guitar, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea on electric piano, Josef Zawinul on electric piano and organ, Dave Holland on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. Teo Macero produced. Stan Tonkel engineered. The session ran for approximately three hours and produced around 40 minutes of committed material, the tape machine running continuously as the musicians worked through the pieces with minimal verbal instruction from Davis and no written charts.

What was released on 30 July 1969 was not a direct document of that session but a construction assembled by Macero using tape editing techniques he had developed across years of work with Davis, Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck at Columbia. Macero shaped the recordings in accordance with classical sonata form — each of the two side-long pieces moves through three sections, with the opening material repeated at the close, giving the album a symmetry no single improvised take possessed. "In A Silent Way" is a Zawinul composition; "It's About That Time" is Davis's. "Shhh/Peaceful" is Davis's. The album was controversial on release — jazz critics were unsettled by the electric instrumentation and the editorial construction; rock critics were divided on whether it was jazz or something else entirely. It has since been consistently placed among the most important recordings in Davis's career, and among the most significant in the history of jazz.