Miles Davis would have turned 100 today. Throughout this year, musicians and listeners have been celebrating the centennial with concerts, recording projects, retrospectives and tributes to his legacy.
Miles spent his life searching. He changed the sound of jazz repeatedly, assembling generations of musicians around him and pushing constantly toward something new. Few artists loom larger over the history of the music.
And yet, there’s something about Miles that challenges tributes. Maybe it’s because so much of his own contribution was his restlessness. Or the instinct to leave familiar ground behind.
Forty years ago, in January of 1986, my father, Ben Sidran, sat with Miles on the terrace of his Malibu home. Miles was famously focused on the present and the future. But in this conversation, he reflected on creativity, individuality, and what it meant to make a contribution.
