Miles on Monday: An update on the Miles Davis Memorial Project, and more

For this week's "Miles on Monday," we've got an assortment of recent Davis-related links, starting with the latest photos of the nearly-completed clay model of the statue of the trumpeter destined for downtown Alton near his place of birth.

(The model then will be used to make a mold, in which the bronze statue will be cast, so finishing it definitely is a significant step in the process.)

Meanwhile, the Miles Davis Memorial Project still is raising funds to complete and install the statue. They'll be selling commemorative brick and blocks, also to be installed at the site, until March 1. For more information on how to contribute, check their Facebook page.

Next comes news of the release tomorrow (Tuesday, December 2) of All of You: The Last Tour, 1960, a new boxed set that documents some of the music made at the end of saxophonist John Coltrane's time in Davis' quintet. European audiences who saw the group's final 22-show tour - excerpts from eight concerts are included in the set - were expecting something like Kind of Blue, while Coltrane (pictured, with Davis) already was on to a new and very different stage in his own musical evolution, leading critics to call his playing "scandalous" and say it evoked "terror."

Lastly, if you're not clear on the particulars of exactly how, and how many times, Davis essentially changed the direction of modern jazz, the article "Miles Davis Did More for Modern Music Than You Probably Ever Thought", published last week on a site called Mic.com, gives a reasonably cogent overview of Davis' contributions that may be interesting for both fans and the previously uninitiated.