Miles Davis’s Breakthrough Soundtrack

Jazz Intimacies on Screen

What is the role of jazz music in movies and on soundtracks? Ashley Kahn and Jonathan Gill discuss music and film and dive into the legendary trumpeter Miles Davis’s groundbreaking soundtrack to the 1958 film Elevator to the Gallows (Lift Naar Het Schavot). How did Davis fall into this project, how did he develop the haunting music, and how did this experience shape his career? These and other questions will shed light on a historically creative moment that had greater impact than most realize.

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This event can also be attended online.

About the speakers

Ashley Kahn is a Grammy-winning music historian, author and producer. He co-wrote Carlos Santana’s autobiography The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light, and has written titles on legendary recordings Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, and a record label: The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. His most recent book, George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters was published in August 2020. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music. Kahn has also worked on many music documentaries in a variety of roles, e.g. as producer/director for Kind of Blue: Made In Heaven, about the famous Miles Davis album.

Jonathan Gill (moderator) is professor of Humanities at Amsterdam University College. He received his PhD in American literature and has taught literature, history, Yiddish and writing at Columbia University, Barnard College, the Manhattan School of Music, Fordham University, the City College of New York and the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. He is the author of Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History, from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America (Grove/Atlantic 2011) and Hollywood Double Agent (Abrams 2020).