Personnel: Miles Davis (trumpet, flugelhorn); Gil Evans (arranger, conductor); Taft Jordan, Johnny Coles, Louis Mucci, Ernie Royal, Bernie Glow (trumpet); Dick Hixon, Frank Rehak (trombone); Joe Singer, Tony Miranda, Jimmy Buffington, John Barrows, Earl Chapin (French horn); James McAllister, Bill Barber (tuba); Harold Feldman (flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, oboe); Eddie Caine, Al Block (flute); Danny Bank (alto flute, bass clarinet); Romeo Penque (oboe); Jack Knitzer (bassoon); Janet Putman (harp); Paul Chambers (bass); Jimmy Cobb (drums); Elvin Jones, Jose Mangual (percussion). Producers: Teo Macero, Irving Townshend. Reissue producer: Phil Schaap. Recorded at 30th Street Studio, New York, New York on November 15 & 20, 1959 and March 10, 1960. Includes liner notes by Nat Hentoff and Phil Schaap. Digitally remastered using 20-bit technology by Phil Schaap and Mark Wilder (Sony Music Studios, New York, New York). The crown jewel of the epic Evans/Davis triptych that began with MILES AHEAD and PORGY AND BESS, SKETCHES OF SPAIN is as emotionally compelling as any performance in the trumpeter's remarkable body of works. Combining as it does the emotional gravity of two cultures--the deep song of flamenco music and the rich lament of the blues--SKETCHES OF SPAIN is a musical hybrid of enormous power and beauty. Gil Evans' immense canvas of orchestral colors inspires some of Davis' most deeply felt solo flights. He paints vast vistas of velvety, shimmering night sounds, and through it all runs the mountainous backbone of Spain's native rhythms and chants. The centerpiece of SKETCHES OF SPAIN is the Evans/Davis treatment of the second movement of Rodrigo's Concierto De Aranjuez. Evans' charts engage Davis in a shifting, insistent dialogue, italicizing the trumpeter's subtle variations and timbral ecstasies with magnificent orchestral flourishes. The surreal patina of three flutes and harp, high muted trumpets and woodwinds, and subterranean trombones, French horns and tuba that define one of the main variations on the theme, is a majestic foil for Davis' expressive tones. Gil Evans liked to say that after Louis Armstrong, no one had affected the sound of the trumpet like Miles Davis. Miles fashioned a vibrato-less, introspective brass cry, made all the more lovely by his lush use of the middle and lower registers. Davis' manipulation of pitch on Saeta and Solea is so idiomatic, so vocalized, so full of revel and lament, it pierces your heart with heroic resignation and longing. SKETCHES OF SPAIN stands alone as one of the pillars of modern music.

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