Some of the greatest albums in jazz history were born not out of months of careful planning, but a chance encounter or event. Miles Davis’ now-famous ’64 Concert was one of those, as this article explains…
In February 1964, Miles Davis walked onto the stage of Philharmonic Hall in New York with a band that was still in the process of becoming one of the most important groups in modern jazz.
The rhythm section was already set: Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums. Williams was had just turned eighteen, a teenager reshaping the role of the jazz drummer every night, and together the three of them had begun developing a new kind of interaction: faster, lighter and more responsive than anything in Miles’s earlier groups.
George Coleman was on tenor saxophone at the time, a technically brilliant player with a deep command of harmony. Wayne Shorter would join later in the year, but at this moment the band was still finding its identity, testing ideas on stage and discovering what it meant to improvise with such speed and freedom.
The concert they were about to play was not ordinary. It was a benefit for the Civil Rights Movement, organised by CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) and held at Philharmonic Hall — a major new venue inside Lincoln Center.
For the younger musicians, especially Hancock and Williams, it was the sort of hall reserved for classical orchestras and high-profile cultural events. The stage, the audience, the political significance — everything contributed to a sense that this was a performance they wanted to get right.
Then came the shock.
Shortly before going on stage, Miles informed the band that they would not be paid. It was a benefit concert; the money was going to the cause. Whether he intended to unsettle them or simply stated the facts bluntly, the effect was immediate. Hancock later recalled that the group walked out feeling deflated. They believed they had played stiffly, that they never settled into a groove and that the audience probably sensed their discomfort.
Backstage, after the applause died down, the mood was low. Hancock described it years later: “When we walked away from that concert, we were all dejected and disappointed. We thought we had really bombed.”
The irony is that the concert became one of the most celebrated live recordings of Miles’s career.
A few weeks later, the band listened back to the tapes. What they heard was not a hesitant performance at all, but a group operating with an intensity and precision they hadn’t fully appreciated in the moment. Miles was in peak lyrical form, using space and phrasing with a quiet confidence that contrasted sharply with the tension of the evening. Hancock’s comping was sparse but brilliantly placed, Carter’s bass lines were firm and architectural, and Tony Williams played with a looseness and daring that belied his age.
A Concert of Two Halves
The concert was released in two parts, divided by mood and tempo. The ballads and medium-tempo pieces became My Funny Valentine, an album that quickly gained a reputation for its delicacy and emotional restraint.
The faster, more aggressive numbers — the ones where Williams’s drumming seemed to lift the entire band off the ground — appeared as Four & More.
Taken together, these two albums captured the heart of Miles’s transitional period between the 1960s modal quintet and the emergent Second Great Quintet.
The rhythm section’s approach was something genuinely new. Instead of laying down a fixed foundation, they created a flexible, moving surface on which Miles could work. Time became elastic: Williams would push the tempo forward, pull it back, or break it apart altogether; Carter kept the pulse anchored enough to prevent chaos; Hancock floated in and out, choosing moments of silence as carefully as moments of harmonic colour.
This interplay — subtle, unpredictable and constantly shifting — was one of the reasons Miles assembled these particular musicians in the first place. He sensed that they could support him while challenging him, that they would keep the music alive rather than simply accompanying him.
What Philharmonic Hall revealed was how far that dynamic had already developed by early 1964.
Many listeners still consider My Funny Valentine one of Miles Davis’s most sensitive live recordings. The title track is especially striking: Miles plays with an almost whispered tone, sometimes letting phrases trail off without resolution, while Hancock, Carter and Williams create a quiet but restless pulse behind him.
Nothing feels static. Even at its softest moments, the music is alive with motion.
Four & More, on the other hand, shows what happened when the band shifted into high gear. Williams’s drumming is explosive, often propelling the band several notches faster than the tempo that begins each tune. Yet nothing sounds rushed. The energy is controlled, sharpened and directed — the sound of young musicians redefining how a rhythm section could function.
What makes the story compelling is the contrast between how the musicians felt and what ended up on the record. They walked offstage convinced they had failed. But the recordings revealed the opposite: a band on the edge of discovering its voice, captured at exactly the right moment.
In retrospect, the Philharmonic Hall concert marks the beginning of the Second Great Quintet era.
Wayne Shorter would join later in 1964, completing the lineup, but the foundation — the rhythmic fluidity, the openness, the willingness to abandon predictable structures — is already present on My Funny Valentine and Four & More.
It’s an unlikely masterpiece. A benefit concert, no pay, nerves, doubt — followed by one of the greatest live documents in the Miles Davis catalogue. If you haven’t revisited these recordings recently, they reward every listen. There’s a reason musicians still study them: they show what happens when preparation, tension and risk collide in the right hands.
And the band thought they had bombed.
Looking for more?
Check out this guide to Miles Davis’ major albums; the Philharmonic Hall recordings are essential listening.