Before the centenary essays, before the glossy photos and all those carefully ranked discographies, there was just a room, a record, and a sound I couldn’t really grasp, except I knew I’d never forget it.
Now, with the hundredth anniversary of Miles Davis, everyone’s stepping up to pay tribute. Critics lay out the usual turning points. Fresh takes on old arguments show up dressed as if they’re brand new. There’s this recent French book, Miles Davis – du BeBop au HipHop by Lucas Cechiari, that traces the path from bebop to hip-hop, covering his restless urge to keep moving and never get pinned down.
And sure, all that’s true. But honestly, it’s not the most interesting way to remember him.
For me, Miles starts somewhere else, on some afternoon from my childhood in a friend’s house. His parents owned the soundtrack to Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, a movie by Louis Malle I was way too young to see. But I got to hear the music: spare, nocturnal, full of tension and restraint. It didn’t shout; it lingered in the air and asked for your attention, but never demanded it.
At the time, I was slogging through solfège and cello at a conservatory. Jazz wasn’t part of the curriculum. No classes. No road map. No encouragement to improvise, not officially, anyway. Even so, something shifted. Not a conversion, but a recognition, a door opening onto a sound that felt so close and, at the same time, impossibly far away.
After that, Miles never really left. He was there on vinyl first, then through the cocoon of a Walkman. When CDs showed up in the ’80s, I switched without a second thought. I carried that sound across formats and years. Along the way, I found Weather Report and Spyro Gyra, groups that stretched the territory Miles had already carved out. For me, this was more than just listening; it was a way to orient myself in time and space, a way to understand possibility itself.
Miles didn’t just live in history. He reported from it. Every time the music changed, bebop, cool jazz, modal, fusion, it felt less like reinvention and more like dispatches from a front line you didn’t know existed yet.
Down the road, that private life of listening led, almost without me noticing, into a professional one. I started working in media, filming festivals, lots of jazz, often Miles himself.
From a distance, filming a show looks technical. Up close, it’s like improvising under pressure. Cameras need to anticipate what’s coming, not just react. You have to move with intention, stay sharp, and sometimes just disappear. Rehearsal isn’t a warmup; it’s a test.
The first time I filmed Davis, I remember the tension most. Not fear, exactly, just that awareness that everything mattered, that I had to be precise but unnoticed. After a string of test shots, I was by the monitor, watching the footage roll back in silence.
Suddenly, footsteps behind me. A hand on my shoulder.
I turned, and there he was, trumpet in hand, calm but massive, eyes flicking to the screen and back to me.
“Nice pictures, bro.”
That was it.
I stammered something in English. By the time I looked up, he’d already moved on.
Later, there’d be other small moments, a nod, a glance, one time he got the director to have me run a stage camera, right up close. That was the only time I really felt starstruck. Not because he was famous, but because he radiated something deeper. Call it internal gravity. Quiet authority. He shaped the room without having to try.
Still, it was never just about his presence. With Davis, it was all in the music.
He listened, really listened. Not just to the band, but to the world itself: its rhythms, tensions, silences. Every time he brought the horn to his lips, it sounded different. Nothing was ever a straight repeat. He played for the moment. I never heard him repeat himself.
The bigger the crowd, the more charged the air, the further out he’d go, stretching, twisting, leaving space where you’d expect sound. People call it mastery, but honestly, it’s more about focus. A rare kind of attention.
Europe always had a particular fascination with Miles, respect, even a kind of official embrace that the U.S. only sometimes matched. Modern musicians like Médéric Collignon still draw from that same deep energy. Davis’s influence here isn’t stuck in a museum; it’s alive, still morphing.
Sure, there are the classics, Kind of Blue gets mentioned again and again. But trying to sum up Miles with one album, or even one era, just misses the point. He never settled down, and his work won’t let you box it in.
He stretched beyond music, too. He painted, bold, abstract canvases, chasing the same ideas you could hear in his notes: space, contrast, tension. Most people can’t see the paintings today, but they show the same restless vision.
If you want a way in through film, Ascenseur pour l’échafaud is essential. The soundtrack isn’t just background; it’s Miles reimagining the movie as he plays. Then there’s the film Dingo—uneven, maybe, but it still catches that early-’80s moment: Davis, already walking the line between reality and legend.
Jazz and time have a weird relationship. The greats don’t fade, they refract. They show up again and again, in new shapes. Davis stands with giants like Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, artists who keep making sense, years after their time.
So now, a century on, the temptation grows: wrap up the story, decide where he belongs, put a period on the timeline. But Davis refuses that as much as he refused anything else so final.
The records are still here. The formats shift, the pictures fade.
And somewhere, a room like the one where all this started, somebody hears that sound for the first time: thin, searching, unfinished.
Still becoming.
Thierry De Clemensat
French journalist Based in Austin, Texas, Writes on Jazz, Culture and Global Society
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Ascenceur pour l’echafaud (Blu-Ray, Movie)
Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud – 1958) The Criterion Collection [DVD]
Dingo (DVD-Movie)