Miles Davis came into the New York jazz scene as World War II ended, at a time when Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were playing faster, higher and better than anyone ever had in jazz, or was ever likely to. So Davis settled, in his trumpet playing, for exploring the middle registers and more melancholy moods that Gillespie ignored. In a sense, his whole career has been based on changes like that – leaving what he was doing and searching for something new, something unexplored. It is very rare in jazz to change and experiment; you either stick to your style all your life or die young, leaving a question mark behind. Only Duke Ellington, apart from Miles, has really gone on changing all his life, but Davis has done it even more recklessly, to the point that he now feels he has left jazz behind (‘a museum music’, he calls it) and won’t recruit players from the jazz field.

In other words, he is one of the very few jazz players with a good musical story to tell. He is also one of the most challenging characters in jazz. A lot of people don’t suffer fools gladly. Miles doesn’t suffer almost anyone gladly. In 1986 he played a bit