Modern Art Orchestra: Miles Davis 100 | Porgy and Bess (HU/US)

Miles Ahead brought together a variety of material, but a year later, Gil Evans transformed an adaptation of Gershwin’s opera *Porgy and Bess* into a truly captivating concert. The 1958 recordings radiate an inner tension, even though Evans handles the orchestra with great restraint; in “Summertime,” he adds just a fragment of a melody—a total of seven notes at a lively tempo—to the accompaniment, which is then repeated. Meanwhile, the hero portrayed by the trumpet believes he can move freely, but the monotony of the accompaniment gives us a sense of foreboding—even as we still dare to revel in the beauty. In “I Loves You Porgy,” the tension is already immense, even though there is barely any movement in the accompaniment; it is almost at a standstill. The palpably vulnerable sound of Davis’s trumpet demonically draws our attention, whether it embodies the narrator or one of the main characters. Soloist and orchestra, innovation and tradition, classical and jazz; the complex goals of this legendary album remain worthy of emulation for the Modern Art Orchestra to this day.

The Modern Art Orchestra’s three-part concert series pays tribute to the jazz icon, who would have turned 100 this year, through the legendary collaboration of Miles Davis and Gil Evans. The evenings dedicated to three indispensable albums in jazz history—Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain—are not merely reinterpretations of iconic records, but trace the arc of a shared musical vision: the expansion of the boundaries between jazz and classical music, the redefinition of the orchestral sound, and a revolutionary rethinking of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. The series is both a tribute to the centenary of Miles Davis’s birth and an articulation of the Modern Art Orchestra’s artistic creed: to openly seek new sonic ideals while drawing from the tradition of jazz. Three concerts, different facets of a single musical concept.