Photo: Miles Davis in Murray Lerner's Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue
Just as Bob Dylan's decision to plug in marked a turning point for modern folk music, Miles Davis's utilization of electric instruments, rock rhythms, and free-form improvisation in his iconoclastic late-'60s jazz compositions heralded the dawn of a new era for both the musician's career and the musical genre itself. In Electric Miles: A Different Kind of Blue, filmmaker Murray Lerner (an Oscar winner for 1980's From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China and director of the 1997 doc Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival) traces Davis's revolutionary abandonment of his traditional "So What" jazz in favor of a striking amalgam of classic and contemporary sounds that culminated in 1969's unparalleled "Bitches Brew." Nick Schager
Just as Bob Dylan's decision to plug in marked a turning point for modern folk music, Miles Davis's utilization of electric instruments, rock rhythms, and free-form improvisation in his iconoclastic late-'60s jazz compositions heralded the dawn of a new era for both the musician's career and the musical genre itself. In Electric Miles: A Different Kind of Blue, filmmaker Murray Lerner (an Oscar winner for 1980's From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China and director of the 1997 doc Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival) traces Davis's revolutionary abandonment of his traditional "So What" jazz in favor of a striking amalgam of classic and contemporary sounds that culminated in 1969's unparalleled "Bitches Brew." Nick Schager
