Miles 100 - ein literarisch-musikalischer Dialog mit Stefan Hentz & Pablo Held

100 Jahre Miles Davis

Miles Davis would have been 100 years old on May 26. Reason enough to take a closer look at the trumpeter who redefined jazz time and time again.

The Cologne-based pianist, teacher and podcaster Pablo Held (born 1986) has been intensively involved with the trumpeter's music since his youth and continues to uncover new details and perspectives on the work of the musician of the century.
In his biography "Miles Davis - Sound of a Life", which has just been published by Reclam Verlag, the Hamburg author Stefan Hentz (born 1957), who was awarded the 2019 German Jazz Journalism Prize, creates a kaleidoscope of narrative perspectives and fans out the trumpeter's artistic and political self-image and asks questions about his personality - and about the myths that still surround the Prince of Darkness today. Miles Davis was a man of change, a musician who repeatedly redefined the boundaries of his art in the five decades of his career. From bebop to the tonal sophistication of cool jazz, from the earthy passion of hard bop to modal iridescence, from the magnetism of the swinging beat to the groove to the trances of electronic dance music, Davis consistently celebrated permanent change.

In their conversation about the multi-layered development and work of one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, Pablo Held and Stefan Hentz, the pianist and the author, create a cross-generational picture of a musician in whose work the history of jazz and world history reach out to each other. Perhaps Pablo Held will not miss the opportunity to underline one or the other argument musically. A piano is at the ready.