Blue Canvas : The Artist Miles Davis

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Music: Jazz & Blues

Blue Canvas: The Artist Miles Davis

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Blue Canvas : The Artist Miles Davis

A musical portrait of how the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis became a painter in later life.

4 Extra Debut. A musical portrait of how the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis became a painter in later life. With artist Jo Gelbard. From 2016.

Miles Davis remains one of the most influential musicians from the last century, despite his death in 1991. 

But what's less well known is that he dedicated the final years of his life to painting with the same fervent energy he had devoted to music.

"A painting is music you can see, and music is a painting you can hear." Miles Davis

New York artist Jo Gelbard who became Miles Davis's companion during the last years of his life, tells the story of his little known life as a painter, alongside interviews with his friends and family.

The story begins with Davis' sudden stroke in 1982, when he took up art as a therapy after his illness. Soon after, he met Gelbard who was 24 years his junior and they embarked on a turbulent relationship which resulted in an extraordinary artistic collaboration. 

Davis's son Erin recalls how his father always carried two things - his trumpet case and his paint brushes - and he sat surrounded by canvases in the apartment they shared, painting with a furious energy. 

Musician and painter Robert Wilburn III who spent a lot of time with Davis during his final decades, discusses the relationship between art and music, rhythm, colour and space in his performances and his paintings. 

And the author George Cole, who wrote a book about the final years of the trumpeter's life, talks about the importance of his art.
  
Woven into the programme is a soundtrack of Davis' music, and clips from a never-before-broadcast interview with the writer Scott Gutterman, the author of a book about the trumpeter's art, and who recorded with Davis over several months shortly before he died in 1991. 

Producer: Jo Wheeler

Made to mark 90 years since Miles was born - 26th May 1926.   

A Freewheel production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in May 2016.

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