Miles Davis was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer whose work spanned multiple jazz genres across a career that stretched from the mid-twentieth century through to his death in 1991.

Born on May 26, 1926, in Alton, Illinois, Davis attended East St. Louis Lincoln High School before going on to study at the Juilliard School in New York. His formal training positioned him within a professional musical world that he would navigate as both a performer and a leader of ensembles throughout his life. He died on September 28, 1991, in Santa Monica, California.

Over the course of his career, Davis accumulated a substantial record of institutional recognition. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and was designated an NEA Jazz Master, two of the more prominent honors granted within American music. He also received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize and an honorary doctorate from Paris Nanterre University, acknowledgments that extended his reputation beyond the United States. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, further marking the breadth of his public profile as a musician.

As a performer and composer, Davis worked across a notably wide range of genres within the jazz tradition. His output touched on bebop, hard bop, cool jazz, modal jazz, and jazz fusion, reflecting a sustained engagement with the evolving forms that jazz took during the latter half of the twentieth century. That range across distinct and sometimes divergent styles — from the harmonic density of bebop to the electric textures associated with jazz fusion — represents the most consistent and documentable thread running through his recorded and performed work.