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In a startlingly original recreation of music associated with jazz legend Miles Davis, co-producers Bob Belden and Louiz Banks have recast familiar themes from such landmark recordings as Bitches Brew, In A Silent Way, and Kind of Blue with an East Meets West sensibility on Miles...From India. An incredibly ambitious project involving two dozen musicians from two separate continents recording in studios around the world, Miles...From India is a cross-cultural summit meeting that puts a provocative pan-global spin on such Miles classics as "All Blues," "Spanish Key," "So What," "It's About That Time" and "Jean Pierre."

Producer-archivist Belden, renowned for his Grammy Award-winning reissue work on a series of Miles Davis boxed sets for Sony/Columbia, explains sitar and tablas, ghatam and khanjira, mridangam and Carnatic violin blend seamlessly with muted trumpet and saxophones, screaming electric guitar and grooving electric bass lines, piano, upright bass and drums on this profound fusion of Indian classical and American jazz. Recorded in Mumbai and Madras, India and New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the music on Miles...From India was performed by classical and jazz musicians from India with the addition of musicians who have recorded or performed with Miles Davis over the span of five decades.

The Miles alumni included on the sessions are saxophonists Dave Liebman (1972-74) and (1970-71), guitarists Gary Bartz Mike Stern (1981-84), (1973-76) and Pete Cosey John McLaughlin (1969-72), bassists Ron Carter (1963-69), Michael Henderson (1970-76), Marcus Miller (1981-1984), Benny Rietveld (1987-91), keyboardists Chick Corea (1968-72), (1985-87) and Adam Holzman Robert Irving III (1980-88), drummers Jimmy Cobb (1968-63), (1971), Leon 'Ndugu' Chancler/Lenny White (1969) and Vince Wilburn (1981, 1984-1987) and tabla player Badal Roy (1972-3). The Indian contingent is represented by keyboardist Louiz Banks, drummer Gino Banks, American-born alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, sitarist Ravi Chari, Vikku Vinayakram (a charter member of Shakti) on ghatam, V. Selvaganesh (a member of Shakti and Remember Shakti) on khanjira, U. Shrinivas (from Remember Shakti) on electric mandolin, Brij Narain on sarod, Dilshad Khan on sarangi, Sridhar Parthasarathy on mridangam, Ranjit Barot on drums, Taufiq Qureshi and A. Sivamani on percussion, Kala Ramnath on Carnatic violin, Rakesh Chaurasia on flute and Shankar Mahadevan & Sikkil Gurucharan on Indian classical vocals.
 
Some of the other highlights of this remarkable concept project include: a version of "All Blues" in 5/4 that features the regal rhythm tandem of bassist Ron Carter and drummer Jimmy Cobb (the latter recorded on the original 1959 Kind of Blue session); a 9/4 rendition of "So What" (also from Kind of Blue) featuring bassist Carter, pianist Chick Corea and drummer Ndugu Chancler interacting with a crew of Indian percussionists and konokol vocalists; a ripping, distortion-laced Pete Cosey electric guitar solo alongside Michael Henderson's groove-heavy electric bass lines, Dave Liebman's flute and Kala Ramnath's carnatic violin work on a fast version of "Ife" (from Big Fun and The Complete On The Corner Sessions); some melodic sarod playing by Pandit Brij Narain on a faithful rendition of Joe Zawinul's lyrical anthem "In A Silent Way"; some hauntingly beautiful muted trumpet work by Wallace Roney alongside Shankar Mahadevan's emotive vocals on "Blue In Green"; Marcus Miller's mysterious bass clarinet alongside Roney's trumpet and Ravi Chary's sitar on "Great Expectations"; and some potent, jazzy soloing from trumpeter Roney, tenor saxophonist Liebman and soprano saxophonist Gary Bartz on a slow version of "Ife."

This kind of East Meets West cross-cultural fusion has been going on since George Harrison played sitar on the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" (from 1965's Rubber Soul). Fellow Brit guitarist and Harrison colleague Brian Jones followed suit in 1966 by playing sitar on the Rolling Stones' hit single "Paint It Black." John McLaughlin investigated South Indian classical music forms on the Mahavishnu's 1971 debut The Inner Mounting Flame and Miles Davis took the plunge by incorporating tablas and sitar on 1972's On The Corner. Some important Indo-American fusion projects that have subsequently been released include McLaughlin's Shakti (1975) and Remember Shakti (1999), Mickey Hart's Diga Rhythm Band (1976) and Planet Drum (1991), Talvin Singh's Asian flavored drum 'n' bass recording Anokha (1997), Bill Laswell and Zakir Hussain's Tabla Matrix (2000), Karsh Kale's Realize (2001) and Broken English (2007) and Anoushka Shankar's Rise (2005) and Breathing Under Water (2007). The all-star Miles...From India (2008) session represents the next step in the evolution of Indo-American jazz fusion.