As both a skilled jazz trumpeter and a perceptive visual artist, Rochesterian Dave Chisholm has carved out an odd, singular career path: he creates graphic novels about some of the greatest movers and shakers in American jazz history.
Legendary ambassadors of the art form, including Charlie Parker and Blue Note Records, have been the subject of sprawling graphic novels that are part musical biopic, part fantasy dreamscape. Now Chisholm is setting his sights on another jazz titan: Miles Davis.
“It’s like the nichi-est of niches here,” Chisholm said of his role as auteur of jazz cartoons. “But it's cool, because I can be spreading the good word about this music that's so important, and then spreading the good word about comics.”
The new graphic novel “Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound” is slated to be released in late September by Z2 Comics, a company dedicated to publishing music-inspired comic books and frequent collaborator with Chisholm, who writes the text and illustrates it.
In order to depict the distinct musical qualities of Davis’s different creative periods — from his early days in Parker’s band and the career-making “Birth of the Cool” era, to his work in styles as varied as hard bop and ’80s synth pop — Chisholm used a chameleon-like approach to visuals that the author also employed in his Charlie Parker novel “Chasin’ the Bird.”
“Every chapter has a different look because of the music that he's making at the time,” Chisholm said of the Miles Davis novel. “And sometimes, chapters show his musical evolution in terms of the visual language.”
Chisholm said the story is as factually accurate as Davis’s autobiographical account. The comic book artist likens the process to a game of telephone. “It’s not really meant to be a historical, scholarly document,” he explained. “No, it’s meant to be an entertaining look into this guy’s music and his life and his motivations.”
Daniel J. Kushner is an arts writer at CITY.