“The influence of Miles Davis on other musicians – especially trumpet players – has always been one of the most fascinating subjects in jazz. His inimitable sound, both Harmon-muted and unmuted, is seldom essayed by any trumpet player because it’s so personal. The rarity was Wallace Roney who was so close to it that Davis didn’t mind it when he and Roney took turns performing when Quincy Jones got an aging Davis to record some of his classic earlier music with Gil Evans.

But, other than Johnny Coles – and to some extrent Chet Baker, who had his own distinctive personality – Davis’ sound has been treated in jazz as relatively sacrosanct. Not so much the general approach of his late-50s and ‘60s quintets, which became the most influential of their era by far. What you’ve got here is a rarity that could only show up on ECM – an Israeli trumpet player who is clearly most influenced by Davis’ sound but who eschews the approaches of his classic quintets and sextet in favor of the kind of formal abstraction common on ECM. Nasheet Waits is a great jazz drummer who plays free jazz drums throughout most of this (rather than drums in the style of either Billy Cobham, Jack DeJohnette or Tony Williams).”

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