Miles Davis is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of 20th Century music. He was instrumental in the development of jazz and adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the helm of major stylistic developments and a changing concept of jazz. The innovations that he brought to music in the second half of the 20th Century were profound in their scope and consequences. With The Birth of the Cool, a series of sessions cut with a nine-piece band in 1949 and 1950, Davis tempered bop’s heat with a more supple, serene lyricism.