5 Things to Know About Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain
- The album’s opening track is an arrangement of the adagio from Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, a 1939 guitar concerto.
- This single track takes up almost half the entire record.
- Davis’s version reimagines the classical piece with a jazz ensemble, replacing the original guitar with a flugelhorn.
- The arrangement stays faithful to the concerto’s structure but adds Davis’s signature modal improvisation.
- The choice to center an album on a classical concerto was bold for a jazz artist in 1960.