Miles Davis/Ascent

In 1968 Miles Davis has gone as far as he could with his famous Quinttete in Modal-Jazz and he was looking for New Directions. He had already invited guitarists George Benson and Joe Beck for sessions, had replaced the Double-Bass by the Electric-Bass( provoking Ron Carter to leave and replacing him by Dave Holland) and he had tried out several new keyboards especially the famous 'Fender Rhodes Electric Piano' and on some tracks, recorded in the beginning of 1968, he had used binnary rhythms used in Rock. Now on the 27/11/68 took place an interesting session with lots of novelties. Miles  had invited  for the first time Joseph Zawinul the Austrian composer and keyboarder, whom he knew from his work with Cannonball Alderley. On this session Jack De Johnette played for the first time with Miles instead of Tony Williams and Wayne Shorter used for the first time the Soprano Saxophone in a recording session with Miles.So the session consisted of Miles on trumpet, Dave Holland on Electric Bass, Jack De Johnette on drums and Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Joe Zawinul on electric piano and organ. Zawinul arrived with three compositions that Miles recorded this day. Directions I, Directions II and Ascent. 'Directions I'& 'Directions II' are interesting especially for the binnary rock drumming of De Johnette, but the real masterpiece of this session is the 15 minutes long 'Ascent'. The composition is based on a complicated chord progression played andante and creating an athmospheric mood similar to 'In A Silent Way', another Zawinul compostion,over which Miles And Wayne play beautiful solos. This track differs completely from Miles former work (Some passages sound like 'Soft Machine' ) and announces 'In A Silent Way' which would be recorded 3 months later. 'Ascent 'is one of the most beautiful tracks Miles has recorded. All three tracks appeared in 1981 on the compilation 'Directions', with different tracks recorded between 1960 and 1970.