Jazz Foundation of America Jon Hendricks Miles Ahead - New York City Article

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Friday, February 17

In 1957, Miles Davis and Gil Evans released “Miles Ahead,” perhaps the all-time masterpiece of orchestral modern jazz. This groundbreaking album that forced musicians and listeners to reconsider preconceived notions of the relationship between the soloist and the ensemble, as well as that of one song to another. It was almost that long ago that Jon Hendricks, who was at the time best known as the lyric-writing third of jazz’s all-time greatest vocal group, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, began his plan to adapt the album as a concert work for vocal choir. While individual pieces have been heard here and there over the years (“New Rhumba” turned up on an album in 2000), the complete work has never been performed. Thanks to Hendricks’s old friend, Quincy Jones (and the Jazz Foundation of America), who offered to produce it, Hendricks’s complete “Miles Ahead” will finally receive its long-awaited premiere. With the author present, the 20-voice London Vocal Project will debut what promises to be an amazing work. It may not be the last hurrah for this most venerated of all jazz singer-songwriters – who turns 96 in September - but it just might be his most spectacular.