Of Miles Davis and Gil Evans’ timeless albums, the Grammy-winning Sketches of Spain was the first to go platinum, but it was also the one they worked on the longest in the studio. Davis was inspired by Iberian music in several ways: his wife took him to a flamenco evening, which had a huge impact on him, but one of the tunes had already appeared on their slightly earlier, epoch-making album Kind of Blue. In addition, Columbia Records had already released authentic Spanish folk music, which Evans studied in depth. The Concerto de Aranjuez, an expanded movement from Rodrigo's guitar concerto, flows majestically at the start of the record, followed by folk song arrangements, a Villa-Lobos theme, and a flamenco paraphrase composed by Evans. Evans’ maximalism brought the desired result, Davis’ reputation skyrocketed. Many even trace the concept of world music to have originated at this point. Davis was completely emotionally exhausted by the end of the long weeks of the recordings, having given his all while not giving up on his extensive touring schedule. He gave only one retrospective performance of his earlier recordings in his lifetime, when, a few months before his death, he played a concert in Montreux with Quincy Jones's band, performing songs from the repertoire he had made with Evans.

The Modern Art Orchestra’s three-part concert series pays tribute to this year’s centenary of a jazz icon through the legendary collaboration of Miles Davis and Gil Evans. The evenings built around three inescapable milestones of jazz history – Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain – are not straightforward reinterpretations of the iconic albums, but rather trace the arc of a shared musical vision: the expansion of the boundaries between jazz and classical music, the redefinition of the big-band sound, and the revolutionary rethinking of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. The series is at once a homage to the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’s birth and a statement of the Modern Art Orchestra’s artistic credo: starting from the tradition of jazz while remaining open in the search for new sonic ideals. Three concerts, a single musical idea revealed through different faces.