15 November 1971: Davis and his jazz-rock group perform at London’s Royal Festival Hall, while across town a band of jazz luminaries play at the New Victoria
In putting together the strands of his present group Miles Davis has set out to restrict his own range of expression: so, at least, one concludes after Saturday’s concert at the RFH. Anyone attuned to jazz-rock would have found plenty to enjoy. Three drummers produced a hefty multi-rhythmic wall of sound – occasional forays with bells and triangles were less successful. Incessant feedback spoiled Keith Jarrett’s electric piano solos for me, but I was very impressed with saxophonist Gary Bartz. His tone surprisingly mellifluous, he never indulged in ungainly noises when the
music demanded a steady flow of improvisation, but he was quick to roughen up when a more abrasive attack was justified.
It was this kind of selectivity that the leader ignored. Davis’s trumpet still acts as miraculous conductor of musical energy and he clearly relished attracting to it, by spitting out a few compelling phrases, those torrential percussion sounds crashing around him. But this was all he did. Most of the time he amplified his horn and controlled the sound with a foot-pedal: more rarely, he blew high notes into a microphone. There was no change of mood, none of the old lyricism.