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MILES DAVIS AND DAVID LIEBMAN

JAZZ CONNECTIONS

by Larry Fisher

With a Foreword by Phil Woods

$19.95

This is an oral history based on conversations with David Liebman about his musical career and his association with Miles Davis. Chapter One examines Liebman's background and early influences (Elvin Jones and Miles Davis). Two - information about Liebman and his band, artistic objectives, interaction with an audience; teaching and aesthetics. Three - Liebman's place in the jazz spectrum; performance style; musical and language communication; the ideal audience. Four - Lifestyles and attitudes of jazz musicians; the jazz musician as a businessman and world traveler; the student musician and careers in jazz today. Five - David Liebman on Miles Davis, May 28, 1991, a few months before Miles' death. Six - David Liebman on Miles Davis, Oct. 16, 1991, shortly after Miles' death.

Half of the book's interviews focus on Lieb's insights on Miles. Some excerpts:

"Miles did not doubt his instincts. If he felt you should play, you played then!! It wasn't like there was ever a moment of indecision."

"Miles was always the guy who could play the wrongest note and make it sound great. He could play a C# on a C chord, but the way he would interpret it, bend it, place it. blow it, would make you say, that doesn't sound wrong!!"

"you almost want to cry, especially when you hear the ballads. The guy had a sound. He had a way of expressing beauty and poignancy that was so touching to whomever listened. This will above all remain as a beautiful, lyrical voice. There have been a few others: Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Bill Evans--but combined with his incredible perspective over several generations and the influence that the sidemen have had, the cumulative effect is staggering. When it boils down, it is the beauty and lyricism above all that shines through and makes people remember someone. He had the beauty."

"It is an asset that Larry Fisher is an educator and a saxophonist as well as one of the most well-versed music historians I have met. His ability to skillfully guide interaction between the two of us made this series of interviews the most significant in which I have participated." - David Liebman

"Dr. fisher is an active participant in jazz, our native music, and his penetrating and intelligent questions propel this interview and give it a strong sense of forward motion." - Phil Woods

"With the passing of Dizzy Gillespie, David Liebman may be the leading, living exponent of jazz as an international music." - Jazz Times

"David Liebman has the ability to touch the soul, eking from his soprano saxophone an extraordinary depth of emotion and dramatic range." - Downbeat Magazine

"Liebman has mastered the soprano (saxophone) so thoroughly that he resists the temptation to become infatuated with the source of his formidable technique." - Leonard Feather

(Liebman can speak about) "the vagaries to the jazz life with remarkable aplomb'... "a seminar without David Liebman is somehow not a seminar." - International Herald Tribune

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