Jazz, the Turning Point 1959

Key artists: Miles Davis · John Coltrane · Ornette Coleman · Dave Brubeck · Charles Mingus · Bill Evans

The Polygon Portal Essay Series is a programme of curated immersive listening sessions, pairing themed playlists with companion essays that set the music in its cultural, technological, political and historical context. The sessions are built on the notion that knowing the world behind a record changes what you feel when you hear it. Each essay is presented in 360 spatial audio designed to put audiences inside the music, and experience art in new ways.

Within twelve months in 1959, jazz produced five albums that pointed in five genuinely different directions.
Kind of Blue.
Giant Steps.
The Shape of Jazz to Come.
Time Out.
Mingus Ah Um.

Davis opened space.
Coltrane added complexity.
Coleman ignored the argument and started elsewhere.
Brubeck made odd time signatures commercially viable.
Mingus held it all at once.

At Polygon Portal, one track from each direction is reimagined on one of the world’s best spatial audio systems.
Five records. Twelve months. One year, played the way it was meant to be felt.