Miles Davis only cut a few sides in a quartet format. During the early decades of his career, when his music was all acoustic, he favoured the quintet format with a frontline of a trumpet and tenor sax, and led amazing orchestal sessions backed by the Gil Evans band. He also recorded in larger groups, but his quartet performances are scarce.
All of his quartet studio output from 1951-57 is contained in this set in chronological order, including as a bonus a live quartet performance of "What's New?" (a song Miles never recorded in the studio under his own name), taped in Germany in 1956, and a live quartet version of "My Funny Valentine", recorded in 1958 with Bill Evans on piano.
The latter marked the trumpeter's only quartet recording with Evans, as well as the last appearance of a quartet track in his whole discography until 1963.