Miles Davis's Montreal Legacy Celebrated at Jazz Fest
The festival's 46th edition honors the jazz legend's centenaire, featuring musicians who played alongside him during seven performances between 1982 and 1990.
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Montreal's International Jazz Festival is celebrating Miles Davis this summer during its 46th edition, honouring the trumpet icon who performed seven times for the festival between 1982 and 1990. Festival cofounders André Ménard and Alain Simard recall the concrete aura of a musician who transformed completely once he took the stage.
The connection between Miles and Montreal runs deep. On July 11, 1982, Miles Davis appeared at the Théâtre St-Denis for the festival's third edition—a major coup for the young event. He arrived in a period of personal renewal, having suffered a stroke in January that temporarily paralyzed his right hand, shocking him enough to step back from drugs and alcohol. He played in jazz fusion and jazz-funk mode, accompanied by musicians who would later honour him: Marcus Miller on bass, Mike Stern on guitar, Bill Evans on saxophone, and Mino Cinelu on percussion.
In 1988, at his fourth visit, Miles was staying in a hospital when festival organizers approached him to design that year's poster. Ménard recalls being sent to Miles's hotel room with 150 posters to sign. By the 100th, Miles handed his pen to his nephew to finish the job. "Non, non, non!" Ménard had to intervene. Miles groaned at him, but the organizers prevailed.
Knowing Miles's passion for drawing, the festival founders took a chance. They were allowed to visit a New York warehouse holding his personal effects. "Tels des voyeurs," Alain Simard writes in his autobiography "Je rêvais d'un festival" (La Presse Éditions, 2024), they spent hours flipping through his sketch books, discovering Miles was "particulièrement porté sur les derrières proéminents de chevaux et aussi de femmes, sketchés à coups de crayon impulsifs et stylisés." They chose a self-portrait for the poster. "À un moment donné, j'ai ouvert un coffre et j'avais devant moi sa fameuse trompette bleue," Ménard recalls. "Le Graal!"
What struck Ménard most was Miles's presence. "Avec le temps, on est moins impressionné par la présence de célébrités," he says, "but with Miles Davis, it was less about celebrity than aura. He had a concrete aura, a bit impenetrable, but at the same time very attractive." On stage, his interventions were episodic—his playing was less the centre than the musicians around him, yet his presence commanded everything.