It is only natural that young New Orleans trumpet virtuoso Nicholas Payton, who began his career imitating the young Louis Armstrong and has since gone on to imitate the young Dizzy Gillespie, would move on to the place where many of his colleagues began and have never moved away from: imitating the young Miles Davis. A decade and a half after his death and the year of what would have been his eightieth birthday, Davis remains the most innovative trumpeter in current jazz in that no one has really forged new ground since (Wynton Marsalis, Wallace Roney, et al), and in that sense, this concert’s title, “Still Miles Ahead,” is even more accurate than its presenters, the Jazz Institute of Chicago, may have intended. Payton and his sextet—saxophonist Tim Warfield, trombonist Vincent Gardner, pianist Danny Grissett, bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Marcus Gilmore—perform several Davis pieces and will also offer the world premiere of a new commission intended to reflect the legacy of Davis in celebration of his birthday, redundant in that whether doing so explicitly or implicitly, how could a new piece by any current jazz trumpeter do anything else?
