Miles Davis is still at it — in Prospect Park, the Highline Ballroom, (le) Poisson Rouge, Carefusion Jazz Festival’s Carnegie Hall concerts, also overflowing the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, as per my City Arts – New York column and enriching the glorious Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (June 25 – July 5).
Though he died of exacerbated living at age 65 in 1991, the influence of Miles’ trumpet and his breakthrough “directions in music” vibrates through urbane international cultural as strongly now as ever. Bitches Brew, which launched a jazz-rock revolution, and Tutu, his most ambitious late-period album, are inspiring high visibility concert performances that are exciting in their own rights, unveiling a potential future rather than reviving the past.
This Miles wave isn’t nostalgia-based: it’s a wake-up call for a world short on  sharp melodies, harmonic exploration, rampant rhythm, full-force interaction. Audiences I’ve encountered seem eager to hear again or for the first time Miles’ many modes — from aching fragility to hippest cool to surrealistic phantasmagoria to imperious swagger, all conveyed with surprising, original lyricism.