Miles Davis "The Complete Columbia Album Collection" was released today, just in time for the Holidays. This must have for any fan, comprises 52 of the jazz legend's recordings on 70 CDs, and is only available through Amazon.com To hear a sample of some of the Miles Davis tracks featured on this amazing package, go to AOL's Spinner.com

Sony Music's Legacy Recordings presents The Collection: Miles Davis featuring three classic albums (Sorcerer, Kind Of Blue & In A Silent Way) in a beautiful gift box at one low price. The new box set is in stores September 29th and available for preorder now from Amazon!

Coming September 29th, The Music Of Miles Davis is a specially low-priced 3 CD box set that features all of his biggest hits and a booklet with new liner notes and photos, all in an eco-friendly non-plastic package. Great gift idea for fans this holiday season!

Miles Davis's Kind Of Blue: Legacy Edition has won the MOJO Award for Best Catalogue Release of the Year! Erin Davis (son) and Vince Wilburn (nephew) were in London to accept the award. Visit MOJO's website for a full list of winners:

http://www.mojo4music.com/blog/2009/06/mojo_honours_list_09_the_winne.html

Legacy continues its Miles campaign with Sketches of Spain (Legacy Edition) celebrating the 50th anniversary of the trumpeter’s extraordinary collaboration with Gil Evans. When it was released in 1960, it was so different that many critics simply didn’t know what to make of it. When confronted with the question is it jazz? Miles answered, “It’s music, and I like it.” The finished results were ultimately hailed as a masterpiece, creating a hypnotic ‘possessed’ effect, and brought to a fitting climax the period of intense creativity that had begun in 1954.

Each of the four orchestral album collaborations with self-taught arranger-composer Gil Evans – Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy And Bess (1958), Sketches of Spain (1959), and Quiet Nights (1962) – is a masterwork in its own right. Sketches was Miles’s first post-Kind Of Blue project, and retains that LP’s modal feel on the 16-minute version of Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,’ the inspiration for Davis and Evans. Miles Davis – the great improvising soloist. Gil Evans – the great orchestrator. Sketches was the album with which Davis closed the old decade and opened up the new one.
 
Sketches of Spain (Legacy Edition) includes on 2 CDs what is unanimously regarded as powerful and lasting music, music that represents a compelling blend of the “deep song” of flamenco and the cry of the blues.

This set includes:

* Over two hours of music. The original album along with rehearsal and alternate takes previously heard only on the 1996 set Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, plus the only piece ever performed live by Miles with Gil – “Concierto de Aranjuez” performed at Carnegie Hall on May 19, 1961.

* Bonus digital booklet with Rare photos, session records with Teo Macero’s producer notes and clippings including the 1960 Hi Fi/Stereo Review article by Nat Hentoff describing the Nov. 15, 1959 recording session.

* New liner notes for this 2009 edition are written by composer/academician Gunther Schuller, whose hundreds of accomplishments in jazz include playing french horn for Miles on the 1949-50 Birth Of The Cool sessions, and recording with Miles and Gil on the 1958 masterpiece, Porgy and Bess.
 
DISC 1
CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO) 16:20
WILL O’ THE WISP 3:48
THE PAN PIPER 3:55
SAETA 4:59
SOLEA (12:17)
SONG OF OUR COUNTRY (3:20)

DISC 2
1 MAIDS OF CADIZ (3:47)
2 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[REHEARSAL TAKE, INCOMPLETE, W/O MILES DAVIS] (7:23)
3 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[ALTERNATE TAKE, PART ONE] (12:06)
4 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[ALTERNATE TAKE, PART TWO] (3:34)
5 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO)
[ALTERNATE ENDING] (1:04)
6 THE PAN PIPER [TAKE 1] (3:12)
7 SONG OF OUR COUNTRY [TAKE 9, W/O INTRO] (3:00)
8 SONG OF OUR COUNTRY
[TAKE 14, SLOWER TEMPO, W/O INTRO] (3:11)
9 SAETA [FULL VERSION OF MASTER] (6:03)
10 CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (ADAGIO) [LIVE] (17:07)
11 TEO (9:34)

To celebrate this release, Legacy is producing a free, multi-episode podcast featuring jazz luminaries as well as musicians who were influenced by these albums. The series will be available via iTunes as well as http://podcasts.legacyrecordings.com

Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain: Legacy Edition is available for preorder now from Amazon.

"The Genius Of Miles Davis...The Columbia Years" Fine Art Print Exhibit is heading West! This special event is a joint venture presented by ICON Collectibles, Legacy Recordings & Zune.  From February 5 – 27, more than a dozen framed Limited Edition prints will be on display and available for sale at Zune Space L.A.  Each print has been hand selected from Sony's vast music photography archive, and represents unique pieces of musical history.

"The Genius of Miles Davis - The Columbia Years" Fine Art Print Exhibit
Thursday, February 5, 2009 through Friday, February 27, 2009 (Gallery open to the general public from Monday – Friday 10am – 6pm)
Zune Space L.A.
8275 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 944-0702

As the icy chill of winter settles in, thoughts turn to warmer times, and the sensuous prospects of Valentine’s Day around the corner.  It’s a time that has always enjoyed its own special soundtrack – “’Round Midnight,” “Unforgettable,” “Misty,” “Even The Nights Are Better,” “Making Love Out Of Nothing At All,” “Body and Soul,” “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” “Lay Lady Lay,” “Someone To Watch Over Me,” and of course, “My Funny Valentine.”

A bouquet of familiar songs weaves its way through the first nine volumes of FROM THE HEART, a new series that will be available at all physical and digital retail outlets starting January 20th through Legacy Recordings, a division of SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.

FROM THE HEART will be introduced with collections by nine core artists: Air Supply (on Arista/Legacy), Babyface (Epic/Legacy), Miles Davis (Columbia/Legacy), Aretha Franklin (Columbia/Arista/Legacy), Billie Holiday (Columbia/Legacy), the Isley Brothers (T-Neck/Epic/Legacy), Etta James (RCA Victor/Legacy), Dolly Parton (RCA/Legacy), and Frank Sinatra (Columbia/RCA Victor/Legacy).

MILES DAVIS

When it came to showstopping balladry, no instrumentalist had the touch of Miles Davis.  This collection spans three decades at Columbia starting at an early Miles session with John Coltrane in 1956 (on Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight”).  Two years later, “Stella By Starlight” showcases Miles’ so-called ‘first great quintet’ with Trane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans, who are heard again on a classic from 1959’s Kind Of Blue LP (“Blue In Green”).  Coltrane reappeared in 1961 on Johnny Mercer’s “I Thought About You” (Someday My Prince Will Come).  There are four examples of Miles’ work with arranger Gil Evans: their take on Gershwin’s “I Loves You Porgy” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” (from Porgy And Bess, 1958); “My Ship” (1957); and the Jobim tune “Corcovado” (Quiet Nights, 1962).  A year later, Miles recorded Styne-Cahn’s “I Fall In Love Too Easily” (Seven Steps to Heaven).  In 1985, Miles’ version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” turned that song into a jazz standard.  No collection of Miles ballads is complete without “My Funny Valentine,” in this case a rare 1965 live version from the Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 8-CD box set, with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock.

FROM THE HEART by MILES DAVIS (Columbia/ Legacy  88697 41278 2-6)  Selections: 1. ’Round Midnight (1956)  2. I Fall In Love Too Easily (1963)  3. Stella By Starlight (1958)  4. Summer Night (1963)  5. I Thought About You (1961)   6. Bess, You Is My Woman Now (1958)  7. My Ship (1957)  8. I Loves You Porgy (1959)  9. Corcovado (Quiet Nights) (1962)  10. Blue In Green (1959)  11. Time After Time (1985)  12. My Funny Valentine [Live] (1965).

Fans can order Miles Davis' From The Heart now from Amazon.

On November 21, 2008 the Morrison Hotel Gallery and Sony Music Entertainment's ICON Collectibles will present "THE GENIUS OF MILES DAVIS...The Columbia Years," a photographic exhibition celebrating one of the 20th century's most profoundly influential musicians at the gallery's Bowery location. The exhibit will feature rare and never before seen limited edition fine art prints of Davis taken by Sony staff photographer Don Hunstein, Herman Leonard, Jim Marshall and Lee Wiener between 1955 and 1985. Sixteen 30 x 40 prints will be on display and available for sale at the gallery. Each print has been hand selected from Sony's vast music photography archive, and represents a unique piece of musical history.

Miles Davis was at the forefront of virtually every major development in jazz from World War II through the 1990s. Following the March 1957 release of 'Round About Midnight,'his debut recording for Columbia Records, Davis went on to create an unbroken string of groundbreaking albums for the label, his musical home for more than 20 years. Among his monumental accomplishments during a phenomenally productive period on Columbia Records, Miles pioneered a post-bebop modal jazz with his 1959 masterpiece, 'Kind of Blue', still one of the most commercially and artistically successful jazz albums of all time and launched an ongoing musical revolution with a radical fusion of jazz, rock, funk, electronic and ambient elements on albums including 'In A Silent Way' (1969), 'Bitches Brew' (1970), and 'On The Corner' (1972).

The exhibit will run November 21 through December 31 at the Morrison Hotel Gallery, located at 313 Bowery in New York City.  If you are unable to attend the showing, and are still interested in the Exclusive Fine Art Prints they are showing, you can purchase online at the Morrison Hotel Web Site.

For other Miles Davis Fine Art Prints, visit the Miles Davis store on ICON Collectibles for more information.

For a limited time, now more Essential music from your favorite artists!

In addition to all the hits on Discs 1 and 2 of these best-selling Essential collections, Limited Edition 3.0 CDs feature these additional hits and fan favorites!

* Each Essential Limited Edition 3.0 expanded 3-CD set features the biggest hits and best-loved songs from superstar artists, including material not previously available in an Essential package.

* Definitive, career-spanning and comprehensive, The Essential 3.0 series features all of the must-have selections from the biggest names in music history—now with a 3rd disc!

* Now available for the first time in eco-friendly cardboard packaging.

* Limited Edition 3.0 disc features "Stella By Starlight" and "In A Silent Way."

Limited Edition 3.0 titles are in stores August 26, 2008 and available for purchase from Amazon!