JAZZ CORNER: CELEBRATING A HUNDRED YEARS OF JOHN COLTRANE AND MILES DAVIS

ON WHAT WOULD’VE BEEN THE JAZZ LEGENDS’ CENTENNIAL, WE LOOK BACK AT THE INDELIBLE IMPACT THEY LEFT WITH THEIR MUSIC

- By SUNIL SAMPAT

For the Jazz community worldwide, 2026 is very special. Jazz superstars John Coltrane and Miles Davis, both born in 1926, would have turned a hundred this year. Though they were mortal, the legacy of music they have left behind has transcended that limitation to become immortal. This music has been recorded and well preserved for the generations that follow to savor, enjoy, and learn from.

It is almost as if Miles Davis and John Coltrane have rewritten the very grammar of Jazz; if it was approached in a certain way before they entered its great traditions, they have suggested that maybe, just maybe, there is another perspective worth looking at without muddying its culture. And then they have shown us how. The impact of Miles & ‘Trane on jazz is enormous.

Miles Davis stamped a signature style of his own onto jazz. He brought about changes in the trend of jazz at different times in his playing days (which we shall expand on further later in the piece), but there was a quality of magic in his trumpet playing that defies category. Miles Davis’ use of the muted trumpet and his persuasive playing just a fraction of a second behind the beat had an almost haunting quality about it; this was especially true when he played ballads. Miles also had an instinctive knack for picking musicians who would be just right for the music he had in mind. His choice of pianists in his different bands—the classy Red Garland in the early Fifties playing standards and hardbop, the pensive Bill Evans for his modal masterpiece album, Kind of Blue, the use of the swinging Wynton Kelly thereafter (and on one track off Kind of Blue), and Herbie Hancock for his later acoustic phase and into his electronic and fusion periods were very astute choices. In retrospect, he could not have chosen pianists who were more appropriate for the phases of Miles’ music.

Miles chose arranger and orchestra leader Gil Evans for his albums, Birth of the Cool