Miles Davis Quintet - Live in Vienna October 1969 Miles Davis Quintet

Chick Corea: “The live stuff really should have been gotten on tape because that was when the band was burning…That quintet developed some really beautiful improvised stuff. We would do two or three pieces that were just strung together, one right after another for the whole concert, and we would make this wonderful, wonderful
composition.”

Jeremy Erwin has described the one-continuous-piece-of-music set they played in Vienna in October 1969 as “supremely weird” starting with “one of the more abstract versions” of Bitches Brew. Given that Miles was sharing the bill with Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington as part of George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festival in Europe tour, it is perhaps not surprising that a large part of the audience walked out during the first ten minutes. But those who remained went on to witness a shining Wayne Shorter quoting from Super Nova throughout on Agitation; a slow-burning, fifteen-minute version of Miles Runs The Voodoo Down, and a classic set-closer, I Fall in Love Too Easily/Sanctuary. In Erwin’s view “the bandleader knew that a dose of serenity was the only resolution to a set as batty as this one.”

The ‘never-recorded Lost Quintet’ that toured Europe in October/November 1969 had spent the preceding August rehearsing and recording a new double LP set Bitches Brew, within a kind of rock big band lineup. But here there was no John McLaughlin on guitar; Wayne Shorter was on saxophones, Chick Corea on Fender Rhodes, Dave Holland on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. This Quintet did record for Columbia in November 1968, but the session was not issued until 1981 on the Directions album.