Nefertiti

Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Miles Davis (trumpet), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums). From the album Nefertiti (1968).

This is the fourth album recorded by Miles Davis with his second great quintet. It was the last one completely acoustic and the tracks were composed by Shorter and Hancock. This album continues the advance of the previous one following an exploratory path and offering recognizable but deliberately dissonant themes. The individual parts intersect in unpredictable ways creating insinuating floating sound landscapes. This music anticipates the arrival of Davis’s next impressionist album, but remains rooted in hard bop.

What is more impressive, as in all the sessions of this quintet, is the interaction, the manner in which the musicians follow an unpredictable path as a unit, creating music that is always provocative and never boring. This quintet’s albums are considered more valuable as a whole than the sum of their parts. Perhaps the Nefertiti’s charms are a bit more subtle than those of its predecessors, but that makes it intriguing. In addition, this album points the way towards fusion while still being acoustic.

The theme is unusual, Shorter begins to expose it and then Davis joins in repeating it throughout the whole composition without doing solos while the rhythm section improvises below. At some point, Carter introduces walking, giving a different character to the music while Hancock keeps playing single chords arbitrarily. So far, Williams has been very restrained, but he is starting to add bolder phrases free of rhythm. The general atmosphere is peaceful and the wind section continues its litany. Suddenly Williams unleashes and plays more strongly, but then returns to normal playing and the group re-exposes the theme for the last time.