The daughter of bebop artists Stephanie Nakasian and Hod O’Brien, Veronica Swift says, “I grew up on the road with my parents, so like, green rooms and jazz clubs were very much a home and the music was very much a language.” (Photo by Amy Pasquantonino, courtesy of artist’s management)
“You have what was at that time the greatest small jazz group that had ever been assembled, bar none. Miles had a way of inspiring everybody to be their best and most authentic self,” he says. “You don’t find John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley sounding like each other or Bill Evans. You find each of them contributing to this record as themselves.” In just two sessions, they recorded what is still the highest selling jazz record every year.
But Davis never rested on his laurels.
“From the ‘60s into the ‘70s, he started to usher in jazz fusion, which really hadn’t happened before.” Influenced by players like Jimi Hendrix, he released records like “Bitches Brew,” “bringing in electronics, electric trumpet and wah-wah pedals and effects…Then, you know, he continued on into more world influences with albums like ‘Tutu.’”
Berg promises that “you’ll hear every era of Miles on this concert.”
He is quick to point out, however, that Coltrane, who shares a centenary with Davis next year, will also be celebrated. In the tightknit jazz world of the 1960s, his status, too, was mythic. To saxophone players, it remains so to this day. His son, Ravi Coltrane, points to his father’s legacy as nothing short of transformative.
“He was able to, in a very short span of time…change 20th century music. He died when he was 40 years old.”
From 1955 to his death in 1967, Coltrane changed the course of Western music.
“Not everyone does that,” says Coltrane. “It doesn’t happen every generation.”
It was “the power of his own conviction,” says his son, that gave him his power as an artist and an innovator. And still, he was a regular man:
“You know, he wasn’t from another planet…He was one of us.” “One of us” with an outsized talent and an unwavering faith in his own inner vision.
“That’s what it’s really about in any creative pursuit: to really trust your instincts and have the courage to follow them,” says Coltrane. “That’s the biggest lesson that I think I’ve learned from him.”
When performing a John Coltrane or a Miles Davis invention, “The goal is not to try to recreate something from the past…it’s not about nostalgia,” he says. “It’s about finding a personal way to express the music, something that’s unique to the players that you’ll see today. We are honoring them, but at the same time we have to kind of honor ourselves in the same way they did.”