Here I am at 33,000 feet again (legally, thanks to Cathay Pacific), listening to one of the truly great jazz compositions – Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis. Perhaps it was my recent culturally-rich trip to Spain or my brain-jangling, Lost in Translation jet lag coming back from Asia, that made these mellifluous notes sound so sweet and pure to my ears, but I think the root cause lies elsewhere. Re-discovering this modern masterpiece was like being re-united with an old friend. Someone you know well and with whom you can celebrate a shared past, while still offering fresh perspectives to the careful companion.
While on that trip to Spain last month, I attended a session of the executive education course Thomson Reuters offers in conjunction with IE and Tuck business schools. It is always a treat to attend these courses which combine 40 or so of our most talented executives along with a world-class faculty. On the day I attended, a wise and mischievous Welsh professor, with musical tastes as deep and soulful as an abandoned local mine, referred the class to the Miles Davis Sketches album.
I found myself nodding judiciously at this musical reference (CEOs make a point of only nodding judiciously), but later when I tried to listen to the tracks from my iTunes library, I realized, rather guiltily, that this masterpiece had not made the transition from vinyl to CD and from CD to MP3. Many were the LPs in my collection which died an appropriate death along this journey. I don’t shed a tear that The Monkeys, The Commodores or Plastic Bertrand fell prey to musical euthanasia, but every so often a great work also failed to cross the digital abyss.
Such was the fate in my collection of Sketches from Spain, which I quickly rectified upon my return from Spain. Listening to it again on the long way back from Asia was like being reunited with an old friend. With fellow passengers and crew as witnesses, I vowed not to let the sublime Concierto de Arunjuez and other tracks miss the next journey from MP3 to whatever lies beyond.