Advertisement
This is a free community event as part of the 2025 Biamp Portland Jazz Festival.Biamp Portland Jazz Festival: Miles Davis / Kind of Blue ‘Jazz Education Series’ Presentation w/ Ashley Kahn
Recital Hall – Mago Hunt Building
Today, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is still the #1 best-selling jazz recording of all time—revered and studied, a fan-favorite and a doorway album into the world of improvised music. Recorded in 1959 with an all-star sextet including John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Cannonball Adderley, it’s considered Davis’s crowning achievement — as if a diverse, far-reaching forty-year career could be compressed into one recording. This discussion is filled with music examples and revealing insights, and is presented by Ashley Kahn, author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. It traces Miles’ earliest years, explaining the “why”s and the “how”s of the creative path that led him to record his masterpiece of modal jazz.
Ashley Kahn is a Grammy-winning music historian, author, a prolific writer of album liner notes, a producer of recordings and documentaries, and has authored books on legendary albums (John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue), on a record label (The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records) and co-wrote Carlos Santana’s autobiography The Universal Tone. He has received numerous honors including a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2023. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music and speaks at a variety of music festivals, conservatories, and music programs around the world.
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
University of Portland, Earl A Chiles Center, N Portsmouth Ave, Portland, OR 97203, United States,Portland, Oregon