Miles Davis, photo by Herb Snitzer
Concierto de Aranjuez (1939), directed its composer, should be only as strong as a butterfly, and as dainty as a veronica. Twenty years later, butterfly Davis and veronica Evans pollinated the greatest jazz-meets-classical flowering ever. Evans's orchestration is stupendous, but Miles's playingalternating trumpet (first open, later Harmon-muted) with low-register flugelhorntranscends even that for hushed, goose-bump drama. "Everybody in the whole studio," participant Elvin Jones recalled, "including engineers, janitors, and everyone elsethey were just awed. And it was because Miles rose above himself. It was one of his greatest performances. I thought it was magnificent. It still is.