Dear Nathaniel,
Hello my angel, I love you. Today has been quite busy for me, and I suppose it's these kind of days that help every now and then. I'm still barely sleeping so I'm too quick to get tired and I just don't feel like I can get properly refreshed at night, doing this every day helps me more than anything.
Tonight, as promised we're listening to Sketches of Spain, Davis' first album of the sixties and the first album after his first great masterpiece Kind of Blue. Miles had something quite special, a sense of timing and scale and how to use it to absolutely great effect. He also gives us an incredibly accessible version of jazz, although it feels as if that was merely an added bonus. What we get is something that's incredibly easy to listen to on the surface but very challenging when you get down to it.
His style of composition flows really well but at the same time there's never anything overtly unexpected until he gets into his fusion period. He was also not scared of moving away from the hard bop style of small bands and brought in nearly 20 musicians to play on this album. It does give the album a very interesting feel especially for someone mostly used to hard bop. Miles Davis was essentially the pioneer of modal jazz with his previous albums and continued to experiment with the jazz sound ever since.
Jazz is one of the styles of music that I absolutely adore however I'm incredibly ignorant when it comes to the goings on outside of the album releases themselves. I know what I like within jazz and it doesn't take me long to find out if I will like something. However I don't have the slightest clue about most of the history and the stories surrounding the scene other than the most basic information that can be gleaned from who played on what album and in what year.
There is probably a whole wealth of information about the jazz scene but I never found it as interesting as the rock of blues side of musical history, even if the music itself is generally superior.
I love you my angel, I hope you enjoyed Sketches of Spain, it's a great album to just chill out to, and we'll continue that tomorrow with some cool hard bop, unless something else takes my fancy. Goodnight my darling Nathaniel.
Love from Dad.
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