Music of Miles Davis on Tour

Jimmy Cobb - drummer for Miles' Classic Release Kind of Blue
Nationwide Tour from Atlanta to Anchorage



New York, NY (November 2, 2005) - Trumpeter Eddie Henderson leads a swingin' group comprised of seasoned veterans and young, talented musicians with Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents: Music of Miles Davis. The band consists of Eddie Henderson (trumpet/leader), Jimmy Cobb (drums), Wayne Escoffery (tenor saxophone), Dave Kikoski (piano), Edward Howard (bass) and various dates for two alto players, Steve Wilson and Antonio Hart. The tour will travel to: Atlanta, Georgia; Appleton, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; Sprint, Texas; Mesa, Arizona; Costa Mesa, California; Malibu, California; Napa, California; Lancaster, California; and Anchorage, Alaska. For tickets, visit venue websites on itinerary below.

“As you can see, this is a collection of some of the top flight musicians that I know," Dr. Henderson recently explained. “Taking into account that we have an opportunity to play Miles' music with Jimmy Cobb on drums, who played and made all the beautiful recordings which have became jazz classics - Kind of Blue, Someday My Prince Will Come, Friday + Saturday Night at the Blackhawk. I'm sure that everyone in the group is looking forward with extreme optimism to the upcoming musical events."

Dr. Henderson will select the set list from the following Miles Davis repertoire: So What, On Green Dolphin Street, Blue in Green, Someday My Prince Will Come, Old Folks, All Blues, 'Round Midnight, Prince of Darkness, Freedom Jazz Dance, Footprints, If I Were a Bell, Gingerbread Boy and Masqualero.

Jazz at Lincoln Center President/CEO Derek E. Gordon explains, “Part of our mission is to produce concerts where audiences can experience the music of the great jazz masters. Miles Davis is by far one of the most recognized and influential figures in jazz. The significance of his music speaks volumes. With these fine musicians, including trumpeter Eddie Henderson and Miles' alumnus drummer Jimmy Cobb, the music lives on."

Eddie Henderson (trumpet) grew up in San Francisco and studied trumpet at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is a practicing physician who also chose his deep love of music as a duel profession. The strikingly beautiful tone and musicality of Dr. Henderson's trumpet playing was admired by Miles Davis who encouraged him to pursue a career in music. Dr. Henderson worked with John Handy, Tyrone Washington, and Joe Henderson, in addition to his own group. He gained recognition for his work with the Herbie Hancock, Art Blakely, Charles Earland, John Handy and Joe Henderson. Dr. Henderson was strongly influenced by Mr. Davis' work of his early fusion period and in the 1970s he led a rock-oriented group. In the '90s, he returned to playing acoustic hard bop and continues to swing for audiences around the world.

Jimmy Cobb (drums) was handling the drum chair during the Kind of Blue sessions, which also included John Coltrane on tenor, Julian Adderley on alto, Bill Evans on piano (with Wynton Kelly sitting in on “Freddy the Freeloader") and Paul Chambers on bass. Mr. Cobb is largely self-taught, though he studied briefly with Jack Dennett, a percussionist in the National Symphony Orchestra. He played engagements with Charlie Rouse, Leo Parker, Frank Wess, Billy Holiday, and Pearl Bailey in Washington. After leaving the city in 1950 he played with Earl Bostic, Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderley, Stan Getz, and Dizzy Gillespie. In 1958 he replaced Philly Joe Jones in the Miles Davis group, with which he remained until 1963. He then joined Paul Chambers in the Wynton Kelly Trio, which toured and recorded both on its own and with Wes Montgomery and J.J. Johnson. He accompanied Sarah Vaughan through the 1970s and later played with Richie Cole, Sonny Stitt, Nat Adderley, and Ricky Ford. Lately, he's been fronting his own band called “Cobb's Mob." Mr. Cobb's style of drumming is in the classic hard-bop tradition of Elvin Jones, Max Roach, and Art Blakey. As an accompanist he plays forcefully, aggressively, and slightly ahead of the beat; as a soloist he uses the entire drum set.

Wayne Escoffery (tenor saxophone) studied with Jackie McLean as one of his prize pupils at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, CT. While at Hartt, he played with Curtis Fuller, Eddie Henderson, Philip Harper, Claude Williams, and Albert Heath, among others. Mr. Escoffery then attended The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. At the institute, he toured with Herbie Hancock and studied and performed with George Coleman, Jimmy Heath, Don Braden, Clark Terry, Ron Carter, Barry Harris, Charlie Persip and others. In 1999, he moved to New York City where he jumpstarted his career and began working with Carl Allen, Eric Reed and The Charles Mingus Big Band. As well as working with his own quartet and quintet, Mr. Escoffery currently performs with Ben Riley's Monk Legacy Septet, The Mingus Band, Abdullah Ibrahim's Akaya, The Carolyn Leonhart Group, as well as Jazz at Lincoln Center's Music of the Masters series.

Dave Kikoski (piano) was born in Milltown, New Jersey and got his first music lessons from his father, a part-time musician who sat his son at the piano and taught him songs by Count Basie and Duke Ellington as well as the basics of Chopin and Beethoven. In high school he played in the school jazz band as well as rock bands. Mr. Kikoski attended Berkley School of Music with fellow students Branford Marsalis, Donald Harrison, Ralph Moore, Teri Lynn Carrington as well as his future wife, Cecilia Tenconi, a reed player from Argentina. He has several of his own releases and has played as a sideman on more than two dozen others. He has played with Roy Haynes, Randy Brecker, Red Rodney, Billy Hart, Craig Handy, Ron Carter, Al Foster, Ralph Moore and many more.

Steve Wilson (alto & soprano saxophone, flutes) is a native of Hampton, Virginia and began his formal training at age twelve. “Adept in almost any setting, Steve Wilson has the rare ability to say more with less, and to let the space between each note breathe and resonate." (George Varga, The San Diego Tribune). It is these qualities that have earned Mr. Wilson the enviable position of being on the bandstand, and in the studio with the greatest names in jazz. A musician's musician, Mr. Wilson had been documented on over 90 recordings with the likes of Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Dianne Reeves, O.T.B., Donald Brown, Billy Childs, Don Byron, Bill Stewart, James Williams and Mulgrew Miller. Mr. Wilson has six recordings under his own name. His sidemen read as a who's who: Lewis Nash, Cyrus Chestnut, Kevin Hays, Steve Nelson, Gregory Hutchinson, Dennis Irwin, James Genus, Larry Grenedier, Ray Drummond, Ben Riley, Mulgrew Miller, Nicholas Payton, and his current working quartet of Bruce Barth, Ed Howard and Adam Cruz.

Antonio Hart (alto saxophone) attended the then new Baltimore School for the Performing Arts. Mr. Hart's real study of jazz began at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He met Roy Hargrove there and spent three years touring the world and recording Hargrove's first three records. Mr. Hart considers Hargrove to be his brother in life and music. He also used Hargrove on his first recording For The First Time. During his first few years on the road, he also worked on a Masters Degree at Queens College. There he had the opportunity to learn from the great Jimmy Heath and Donald Byrd. Mr. Hart's 1997 release, Here I Stand, on Impulse records, earned him a Grammy nomination for “Best Jazz Instrumental Solo." He has been a guest on more than 80 recordings. Since then, Mr. Hart has recorded seven CDs as a leader. Mr. Hart balances his time as a fulltime Professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College and traveling on the road with his band, The Dave Holland Big Band and The Dizzy Gillespie Big Band.

Edward Howard (bass) was born and raised in Washington D.C. He studied with bassists Marshall Hawkins and Buster Williams. Today Mr. Howard has a long-standing tenure with the Roy Haynes Quartet. Since joining Haynes in 1982, Mr. Howard has toured extensively and recorded three cd's with the grand master of the drums. Mr. Howard was also bassist in Clifford Jordan's quartet from 1983-1992 and has performed with musicians like Pat Metheny, Jaki Byard, Greg Thomas and Eddie Henderson.



Miles Davis was on of the most consistently innovative musicians in jazz history. A primary force in the development of jazz from bebop through fusion, his concise, lyrical phrasing, introspective style, and boundless invention serve as a model to jazz musicians of all instruments. Born on May 25, 1926, in Alton, Illinois, Miles Dewey Davis III was raised in a black middle class neighborhood in East St. Louis. The son of a dental surgeon and a music teacher, Mr. Davis took up the trumpet at age 13. He began playing professionally just two years later. Days after graduating from high school, Mr. Davis received his first big break when he was allowed to sit in with the Billy Eckstine Orchestra. There he met trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and alto saxophonist Charlie “Bird" Parker, pioneers of an emerging style of jazz called bebop.

Young Mr. Davis was entranced by their incredible technique, twisting solos, and complex rhythms. He quickly followed them to New York City, where he enrolled in The Juilliard School. Before long, Mr. Davis was performing regularly with Parker, who had become his idol. By the late 1940s, Mr. Davis was leading his own groups and developing his own, unique musical approach. He organized a nine-piece band with an unusual horn section that played lush, relaxed-sounding arrangements by Gil Evans and others. Their recordings, eventually released as Birth of the Cool, inspired many of the band's musicians, including saxophonists Gerry Mulligan and Lee Konitz, and pianist John Lewis, and are considered the beginning of the cool jazz movement.

Mr. Davis soon grew restless with both bebop and cool jazz. He and his colleagues drummer Art Blakey, pianist Horace Silver, and others, missed the driving swing and soulful, blues-based melodies upon which jazz was built. They developed a new style called hard bop, filling bebop with powerful grooves, singable melodies, and thick, earthy tones that brought jazz back to the juke joint. In 1955, Mr. Davis made an informal appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival. The dazzling performance earned Mr. Davis a contract with Columbia records and spurred the formation of his first, now classic, quintet, featuring pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Philly Joe Jones, and saxophonist John Coltrane. Alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball" Adderley would eventually join the group to make one of the most celebrated recordings in jazz history, KIND OF BLUE (which includes drummer Jimmy Cobb). The recording, which featured pianist Bill Evans, highlighted a new “modal" approach to improvisation and composition that offered the musicians an alternative to the fast-moving harmonies of bop.

Mr. Davis' exploratory impulse was relentless and by the early 1960s, the quintet's personnel had changed completely. This second quintet, which featured saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams, shared this willingness to experiment. Their music featured unusual song forms and varied textures and rhythms. Together, they tested the possibilities of new electronic instruments and eventually began incorporating elements of rock and R&B into their music. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, these experiments had developed into a new genre called fusion. From the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, Mr. Davis was semi-retired, but he made a comeback in 1982. As a living legend, Mr. Davis performed and recorded a diverse blend of pop and jazz until his death on September 28, 1991. Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents:
Music of Miles Davis

2005-06 Tour



Date Presenter/Venue City
11/19/2005 Rialto Center for the Performing Arts, www.rialtocenter.org Atlanta, GA
1/25/2006 Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, www.foxcitiespac.com Appleton, WI
1/26/2006 TBD TBD
1/27/06 Orchestra Hall, www.detroitsymphony.com Detroit, MI
4/29/06 The Centrum, www.thecentrum.org Spring, TX
5/4/06 Mesa Arts Center, www.mesaartscenter.com Mesa, AZ
5/5/06 & 5/6/06 Founders Hall Jazz Club Orange County Performing Arts Center, www.ocpac.org Costa Mesa, CA
5/7/06 & 5/8/06 Pepperdine University Smothers Theater, www.pepperdine.edu/arts/ Malibu, CA
5/9/06 Santa Barbara, CA - Education Workshop Santa Barbara, CA
5/10/06 Santa Barbara, CA - Education Workshop Santa Barbara, CA
5/11/06 Napa Valley Opera House, www.napavalleyoperahouse.org Napa, CA
5/12/06 Lancaster Performing Arts Center, www.lpac.org Lancaster, PA
5/13/06 Atwood Concert Hall, www.anchorageconcerts.org Anchorage, AK