Book presentation: Esercizi di metamorfosi. The many musical lives of Miles Davis – by John Vignola

The book presentation will be conducted by Grazia Di Michele, who will guide the audience through a meeting dedicated to the themes, atmospheres, and narrative path of the work.

Rai Libri presents “Exercises in metamorphosis. The many musical lives of Miles Davis” by John Vignola, in bookstores and digital stores from May 20th.

A journey through the decisive turning points of Miles Davis‘s career, understood as a series of turning points where the music produced – and that which is born and develops around him – radically changes direction.

From the cool jazz of the late forties to the expanded quintet that gives shape to modal jazz in the fifties, passing through the orchestral and Mediterranean suggestions of the collaboration with Gil Evans (Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain), up to the turning point of Bitches Brew, with electronics and pop of the seventies and eighties. His evolutions, curiosity, and ability to transform the sound environment have constantly taken jazz elsewhere, opening structures, mixing genres, and rendering every definition of style insufficient. Davis belongs to music in an absolute sense, with a unique horizon: his own creativity.

To complete the story, the testimonies of two great Italian jazz trumpeters who owe their love for the genre and inspiration in their compositions to Davis: Enrico Rava and Fabrizio Bosso. Not a biography nor a technical analysis of sound, but a series of illuminations and suggestions that tell unforgettable albums and tracks, essential parts of the musical history of the twentieth century.

John Vignola is a journalist, music critic, and radio host. Among the most authoritative voices of Rai, he currently hosts “La nota del giorno dopo” on Radio 1 and has created and hosted several successful music programs exploring the history and present of music. For Rai Libri, he curated 70 Sanremo. Photographic history of the Italian song festival