The 100th anniversary of Miles Davis's birth was marked on May 26, 2026, prompting renewed attention to the life and music of one of the 20th century's most influential jazz musicians.
A wide body of biographies and documentaries already exists on Davis. That is fitting, since the story of the trumpeter is shaped not only by his talent but also by darkness, including periods of serious drug addiction.
Beyond music: painting and film
Davis's creative interests were not confined to music. He had a strong attachment to the visual arts, particularly abstract painting, to which he devoted much of his time in his later years, between the 1980s and 1990s.
Another way into his artistic sensibility runs through cinema. Davis composed the score for Elevator to the Gallows, a 1957 film by French director Louis Malle that is considered a masterpiece of film noir. It was Malle's first film, and Davis's music was central to its impact.
Elevator to the Gallows
Elevator to the Gallows is a film about fate and fatal mistakes. Malle shot it in two months with Maurice Ronet and Jeanne Moreau in the lead roles.
After finishing the project, Malle followed a suggestion from his friend and assistant, Jean Paul Rappeneau, and reached out to Davis, who was spending time in Paris, to write the film's soundtrack. Davis was 31 at the time and already famous around the world. Malle, by contrast, was a 25-year-old debut filmmaker working with a modest budget.
A soundtrack born of romance
Malle showed Davis the film. Davis was drawn to its nocturnal atmosphere and, it is presumed, to the lost wandering of Jeanne Moreau's character as she searches for her lover after he kills her husband so the two can escape together.
At the time, Davis was in a relationship with French singer Juliette Gréco. He loved her and felt fulfilled. The mood of the film's scenes, combined with his own emotional state, shaped the musical pieces he rehearsed while watching the footage.
When Malle released Elevator to the Gallows in 1958, critics and audiences embraced it, and the soundtrack Davis composed played a significant part in that reception.
From film score to Kind of Blue
Those melodic experiments laid the groundwork for an album that became essential not just to jazz but to 20th-century music as a whole: Kind of Blue, released in 1959.
The album's five tracks, "So What," "Freddie Freeloader," "Blue in Green," "All Blues" and "Flamenco Sketches," are considered required listening. Davis was joined on the record by fellow giants of the genre, including Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb.
Kind of Blue remains the best-selling album in the history of jazz, with sales of nearly seven million copies.
