Robert Glasper teaching a Miles Davis course at NYU, scored the 'Miles Ahead' biopic

April 8, 2016

Jazz/hip hop musician Robert Glasper will now double as a professor at NYU, helping to teach a course on Miles Davis, whose new biopic Miles Ahead (starring Don Cheadle), he scored. For the class, he’s teaming with Ashley Kahn, author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. Via NYU’s announcement:

Grammy Award winning pianist, producer, composer and Blue Note recording artist Robert Glasper and Grammy-winning journalist, producer, and writer Ashley Kahn will examine the music and legacy of genre-defying trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis this fall at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. This groundbreaking course, which will be open to a select number of undergraduates, will integrate a wide variety of musical styles, including jazz, rock, hip hop, electronic, dance, and neo-soul, to analyze Davis’s pioneering influence on more than six decades of music.

This class marks Glasper’s first foray into teaching at the university level while Kahn is a visiting professor at Recorded Music and has been with the Institute since 2005.

…The seven-class course covers the music and career of one of the most important musical geniuses of the 20th Century, who would have turned 90 this year. The course is divided into two: students will complete focused readings, listening and viewing assignments that investigate the social, cultural, musical and business aspects of Miles’s monumental accomplishments. The second half focuses on musicianship, performance, composition and production with students completing in-class and out-of-class assignments under Glasper’s mentorship, deconstructing Miles’s compositional and studio approaches, and working collaboratively with fellow students to produce and refine original musical works.