Watch Don Cheadle for the First Time Ever as Jazz Icon Miles Davis (Exclusive Clip)

Here’s the first footage of Don Cheadle playing late jazz great Miles Davis in the upcoming biopic Miles Ahead. In the exclusive clip above, we see Cheadle as Davis during a studio session with his band, and it’s clear the trumpet player has a precise sound in mind.

Marking Cheadle’s directorial debut, Miles Ahead is set during a five-year period in the late 1970s when Davis effectively disappeared from public view, tormented by years of regret and chronic pain from a bad hip. Reporter Dave Braden, played by Ewan McGregor, manages to work his way into the famed musician’s house, and from there, the two set out on an odyssey to recover a stolen tape of Davis’s latest arrangements.

During the duo’s lost weekend, Davis flashes back to memories of his failed marriage to his muse, dancer Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi), who was with him during the creation of many of his early signature recordings, including Sketches of Spain and Someday My Prince Will Come.

Cheadle himself is a longtime Davis fan, recently telling Entertainment Weekly that his parents used to play Porgy and Bess and other Davis albums when he was young. “His music was definitely a part of my life very early on, thanks to my parents,” the 50-year-old Oscar nominee told EW. “And I was fortunate when I was young to have music teachers in school that also introduced us to jazz in general.”

Miles Ahead is set to open in theaters early next year.