Agharta is a 1975 live double album by American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Miles Davis. By the time he recorded the album, Davis was 48 years old and had alienated many in the jazz community while attracting younger rock audiences with his radical electric fusion music. After experimenting with different line-ups, he established a stable live band in 1973 and toured constantly for the next two years, despite physical pain from worsening health and emotional instability brought on by substance abuse. During a three-week tour of Japan in 1975, the trumpeter performed two concerts at the Festival Hall in Osaka on February 1; the afternoon show produced Agharta, and the evening show was released as Pangaea the following year.
1976 North American edition
Image: Agharta album cover
Miles Davis in 1971
Festival Hall (left center) in Osaka, where Agharta was recorded
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a roughly five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz.
Davis in his New York City home, c. 1955–1956; photograph by Tom Palumbo
The house at 1701 Kansas Avenue in East St. Louis, Illinois, where Davis lived from 1939 to 1944
Tommy Potter, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Duke Jordan in August 1947
Davis on piano with Howard McGhee (trumpet), Joe Albany (pianist, standing) and Brick Fleagle (guitarist, smoking), September 1947