Lloyd Miller

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Lloyd Clifton Miller (born November 11, 1938 in Glendale ) is an American ethnomusicologist , arranger , composer and multi-instrumentalist (including Zarb , Oud , Kamantsche , Sehtar , Santur , piano , clarinet , flutes , bass , tabla , vocals , percussion instruments ) who is considered one of the pioneers of ethno jazz .

Live and act

Miller grew up in Glendale and was a self-taught piano, C-melody saxophone and banjo as a child . Influenced by the record collection of his father, a professional clarinetist, his style was initially based on musicians such as George Lewis , Johnny Dodds and later on Jimmy Giuffre . His mother was a pianist and ballet dancer. With his childhood friend Spencer Dryden , who later became a drummer for Jefferson Airplane , he played early jazz in the band Smog City Syncopaters in the late 1940s . At the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock (Illinois) he played double bass in the school band. In 1950 he took a first together with a banjo player 78s in Dixieland Jazz on style. In 1951 his father took him to New Orleans , where he saw the clarinetist Alphonse Picou live and met George Lewis, who encouraged him to pursue a career as a musician.

He spent 1957 with his family in Iran , which sparked his interest in traditional musical instruments from the Middle East and Asia. In 1958 Miller performed in hotels in Iran and Beirut and worked as an arranger for various Lebanese jazz ensembles. From 1958 to 1963 he studied in Europe and during this phase earned his living as a jazz musician; During this phase he not only stayed in Geneva and Paris, where he studied Oriental Studies , but also traveled through West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium. He performed with Peter Trunk and Albert Mangelsdorff at the Frankfurt Domicile and then worked in the Mainz Jazzkeller in a trio with Maffy Falay and George Solano, with whom Don Ellis and Eddie Harris also played at sessions and which also appeared elsewhere. In Sweden he worked with Bernt Rosengren , Lennart Jansson, Lars Färnlöf and Conny Lundin. With Jansson, Solano and Freddie Deronde he formed an International Jazz Quartet that performed in Belgium in 1960 and was occasionally reinforced by Philip Catherine . The quartet was invited to the Comblain Jazz Festival . Miller then went to Paris, where he found work at the Mars Club . He was also occasionally able to join Kenny Clarke's pianist at the Blue Note jazz club in Paris . He befriended Jef Gilson and recorded in 1961 with his septet; The first recordings of his own titles such as Pentalogic and Sahar-E Meh-Alude were also made , which were published on the album Oriental Jazz in 1965 . In Paris he studied with Dariush Safvat and Tran Van Khe at the Center d'étude de la musique orientale in the Institut de Musicologie of the Sorbonne and also with Émile Benveniste . During his time in Europe (private and long unpublished) recordings were made in Sweden and Belgium a. a. with Bernt Rosengren, Freddie Deronde, Jacques Pelzer and Philip Catherine.

After returning to the United States, he lived in Utah and studied at Brigham Young University in Provo . There he put the formation Oriental Jazz Quartet together, u. a. with the pianist Press Keys. His debut album Oriental Jazz was released in the mid-1960s . The recording session of his most famous title Gol-e Gandom (a Persian ballad) was also shown on regional television channels. At the Intercollegiate Jazz Festivals in Salt Lake City from 1967 to 1969 he received awards for best arranger / composer and vocalist.

In 1967 Miller continued his studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he obtained a Masters in Middle East Studies in 1969 , and then did his doctorate on Persian music with the thesis Philosophical and Structural Analysis of Persian Avaz . Around 1970 he received a grant to do research in Iran; In the following seven years he traveled through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon and Turkey, otherwise he lived in Tehran, where he worked as a cultural journalist for English publishers and for the Beirut magazine Middle East Sketch . During this time he had his own jazz TV show on NIRTV in Tehran under the pseudonym Kurosh Ali Khan , in which he also presented jazz improvisations on the oud and the double bass. In 1977 he returned to the United States, where he summarized the results of his field research in his doctoral thesis Music and Song in Persia: The Art of Avaz . In his later years he lived in Utah, where he worked in numerous jazz bands and ensembles that interpret Asian music. He also worked as an arranger and composer for various orchestras; He arranged for the Utah Symphony Bunk Johnson's Closer Walk with Thee , King Oliver's Dippermouth Blues and Bix Beiderbeckes Jazz Me Blues and for the Colorado Springs Symphony A Night in Tunisia .

In 2007 Miller submitted his autobiography, Sufi, Saint and Swinger: A Jazzman's Search for Spiritual Manifestations in Many Nations ; In 2009 he worked with the British formations Nostalgia '77 and The Heliocentrics . 2010 an album together was with the Heliocentrics published

Publications (selection)

  • with James Skipper: Sounds of Black Protest in Avantgarde Jazz. In: The Sounds of Social Change. Edited by R. Serge Denisoff and Richard Peterson. Chicago, Rand McNally 1972.
  • The Center for Preservation and Propagation of Iranian Music. Eastern Arts, Salt Lake City 1977.
  • Persian Music. Eastern Arts, Salt Lake City / Utah 1991.
  • Music and song in Persia. The art of āvāz. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 1999.

Discographic notes

  • Lloyd Miller with Jazz Greats in Europe I (1950s & 1960s) with Jef Gilson, Bernt Rosengren, Lars Fernlov, Simor Ostervald
  • Lloyd Miller with Jazz Greats in Europe II (1960/61), with the International Jazz Quartet, Lennart Jansson, Connie Lundin, Freddie Deronde, Jacques Pelzer, Philip Catherine
  • Jef Gilson avec Lloyd Miller & Hal Singer (Kindred Spirits, 1962?)
  • The Near and Far East (East-West Records, 1966)
  • Mike Johnson Jazz At The University Of Utah (East-West Records, compilation)
  • A Lifetime in Oriental Jazz (2009, compilation)
  • Lloyd Miller & The Heliocentrics (Strut, 2010)

Filmography

  • Lloyd Miller NIRTV shows , (Tehran 1970s)
  • Lloyd Miller Trio on NIRTV , (Tehran 1970s)
  • Oriental Jazz Lloyd Miller on KBYU, KUER & NIRTV (1960 / 70s)
  • The Lloyd Miller Trio (2010) with Jake Ferguson, Malcolm Catto

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Information at progressive.homestead
  2. a b c Biographical portrait at Strut Records
  3. Biographical information on Stonethrow Records
  4. ^ A b c Francis Gooding Jazz in an Unfamiliar Key: The Wanderings of Lloyd Miller IAJRC-Journal 2011
  5. a b portrait at Jazzscope
  6. actually Preston Kies
  7. Information at Jazzscope
  8. Eric Luecking: Lloyd Miller And The Heliocentrics: The Sound of Discovery at NPR Jazz
  9. Only the two tracks on the A-side of the EP were released with Miller and Gilson's Septet and initially on Gilson's Spirit Jazz label in 1962 , the two tracks on the B-side come from a session with Hal Singer in the 1970s.