"An apt, alternative title for Mandel’s engaging and enlightening triple portrait could be "Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Avant-Garde?" Weaving together provocative insight and personal experience, he has found a layman-friendly way of explaining three of the most challenging and enduringly experimental icons of modern jazz—and it’s a way that leads right back to the music."-Ashley Kahn, author of A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album"Howard Mandel has readily accepted the white man’s burden, that is, decoding the jazz avant-garde through the thoughtful, straightforward and in-depth analysis of three major figures. Personal yet scholarly, Howard lives the jazz life like he writes it—quite well."-Nutch Myers, author of The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling"Howard Mandel approaches the vast musical imaginations of these three men with the immersed abandon with which a bird must approach air or a fish, water. At once insightfully critical and personal, Miles, Ornette, Cecil will be a wonderful read for anyone who likes books about serious music by serious writers."-A. B. Spellman, poet and author of Four Jazz Lives (formally Four Lives in the Bebop Business)