Miles Davis

Concord is proud to unveil Miles ’55: The Prestige Recordings, a definitive retrospective shining a spotlight on a transformative year in jazz legend Miles Davis’ career. This collection celebrates the birth of Davis’ First Great Quintet and the creative momentum leading to some of his most groundbreaking work.

1955 marked a new era for Miles Davis. That year, he assembled a soon-to-be-storied group — John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums — known now as the First Great Quintet. These sessions, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s legendary Hackensack, New Jersey studio, captured the nascent chemistry and evolving sound that would come to define small-group jazz for decades to come. Miles ’55: The Prestige Recordings gathers 16 newly remastered tracks from three essential 1955 studio dates. The release is available in a deluxe 3-LP 180-gram vinyl set, a 2-CD digipack, and both standard and high-resolution digital formats. Highlights include selections from Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet, Miles Davis and Milt Jackson Quintet/Sextet, and The Musings of Miles, among other pivotal albums.

Every track has been freshly remastered from the original analog tapes by Grammy-winning engineer Paul Blakemore, with lacquers cut by Kevin Gray. The package features brand new liner notes from Grammy Award-winning music historian Ashley Kahn and insightful session notes by late jazz historian Dan Morgenstern.