This album was credited to “Miles Davis +19,” and on it he’s fronting a small jazz orchestra, arranged by Gil Evans. They’d first worked together on the Birth Of The Cool sessions in 1949, and after this would collaborate on two more major albums and one minor one (1962’s Quiet Nights), then split until 1982, when Evans would help with arrangements for the bluesy, stripped-down Star People. Miles Ahead is the second-best of the Davis/Evans albums; it’s not as rich, focused or emotionally potent as Sketches Of Spain, but few records are. At the same time, it’s not lush wallpaper the way so many large ensemble records are. Gil Evans’ orchestrations are active, with the horns frequently blasting high-speed bursts of melody behind Davis as he solos in a somewhat more subdued manner. The tempos are quite fast, too, and the pieces are mostly short — the album packs 10 tracks into just 37 minutes. As a consequence, it never really lags or loses the listener’s attention.

Unlike a small group jazz album (or even most big band albums), Davis is the only soloist here. In that way, he’s almost serving the same function a vocalist might — which is why some listeners might be reminded more of Frank Sinatra’s 1950s albums made with conductor Nelson Riddle, like Come Fly With Me or In The Wee Small Hours, than of instrumental big band records. Miles Ahead may lack the starkness of Davis’ small group work, but it’s enough of a fascinating experiment (at the time it was recorded, big band music was seriously uncool, and he was still under contract to Prestige, meaning it sat in the can for an additional two years) to make it well worth exploring.