Swiss Radio Days Jazz  Series Vol. 31TCB ****

This live recording of Miles Davis’s celebrated ‘first great quintet’, from a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour in the spring of 1960, was made in Zurich by Swiss radio and has been available in second generation copies for some time.

Now remastered from the original tapes, obsessive completists (you know who you are) will not hesitate and will, for the most part, be impressed by a restoration job which reveals a band nearing the end of its tether – five great musicians on a (by their standards) fairly workman-like concert hall date thousands of miles from home.

In April 1960, John Coltrane was months away from quitting the quintet for good, much to the leader's annoyance, and the saxophonist can be heard here plotting his escape, heaping note upon anguished note, while Miles coolly patrols the perimeter fence with his stark enigmatic playing. They would not make many more recordings together. tcb.ch