Mulgrew Miller

Mulgrew Miller (August 13, 1955 – May 29, 2013) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator.

As a child he played in churches and was influenced on piano by Ramsey Lewis and then Oscar Peterson.

After graduating from Greenwood High School, Miller attended Memphis State University in 1973, attending with a band scholarship.

He played euphonium, but, during his two years at the university, Miller met pianists Donald Brown and James Williams, who introduced him to the music of players such as Wynton Kelly, Bud Powell, and McCoy Tyner.

Still at Memphis State, Miller attended a jazz workshop, where one of the tutors was his future bandleader, Woody Shaw, who stated that they would meet again in two years.

They did meet again two years later, and Shaw remembered the young pianist.

After leaving Memphis State in 1975, Miller took lessons privately in Boston with Margaret Chaloff, who had taught many of the pianists that Miller admired.

He later said: "I should have stayed with her longer, [...] but at that time I was so restless, constantly on the move."

Miller played with saxophonists Ricky Ford and Bill Pierce in Boston.

That winter, Miller was invited to Los Angeles by a school friend and decided to go, to escape the cold weather.

He stayed on the West Coast for a year, playing locally in clubs and a church.

Towards the end of 1976, Miller was invited to substitute for the regular pianist in the Duke Ellington Orchestra (by then led by Mercer Ellington; his father died in 1974).

Miller had performed the same role for one weekend around a year earlier, and the new work was to be for only three weeks, but he ultimately toured with the orchestra for almost three years.

His membership of the orchestra helped him, in the words of a piano magazine, to get "respect as a powerful, two-fisted pianist adept at delivering entrancingly lyrical and gracefully introspective runs as well as dazzling and buoyant passages".

Aspects of their styles remained in his playing, but he added the greater harmonic freedom of McCoy Tyner and others in developing as a hard bop player and then in creating his own style, which influenced others from the 1980s on.

After leaving university he was pianist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra for three years, then accompanied vocalist Betty Carter.

Three-year stints with trumpeter Woody Shaw and with drummer Art Blakey's high-profile Jazz Messengers followed, by the end of which Miller had formed his own bands and begun recording under his own name.

He was then part of drummer Tony Williams' quintet from its foundation, while continuing to play and record with numerous other leaders, mostly in small groups.

In January 1980, Miller left the Duke Ellington Orchestra after being recruited by vocalist Betty Carter, with whom he toured for eight months that year.

During the early 1980s, he also accompanied vocalist Carmen Lundy, and played and recorded with saxophonist Johnny Griffin.

He was then part of Shaw's band from 1981 to 1983, thereby, in Miller's view, fulfilling his destiny from their earlier meetings.

In 1981, he made his studio recording debut, on Shaw's United.

Miller was recommended by Terence Blanchard and Donald Harrison for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and he joined the drummer's band in 1983.

Initially, he struggled to fit in with Blakey dominating the rhythm section, but Miller stated that, over his period with the band: "My playing just generally matured. I don't think one single characteristic changed, but the experience certainly boosted my confidence".

At times during concert performances he was allotted a solo piano spot, which Miller used to play medleys.

His presence in the Jazz Messengers cemented his reputation within jazz.

Miller was director of jazz studies at William Paterson University from 2005, and continued to play and tour internationally with other high-profile figures in the music until his death from a stroke at the age of 57.

Miller was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, to parents who had been raised on plantations.

He had three brothers and four sisters.

His family was not musical, but they had a piano, which no one in the house could play.

Miller, however, played tunes on the piano from the age of six, playing by ear.

He had piano lessons from the age of eight.

As a child, he played blues and rhythm and blues for dances, and gospel music in a church.

His family was Methodist, but he played in churches of multiple denominations.

His principal influence on piano at this stage was Ramsey Lewis.

While in high school, Miller formed a trio that played at cocktail parties.

His elder brother recommended that he listen to pianist Oscar Peterson, but there was no way of doing this in Greenwood until Peterson appeared on The Joey Bishop Show on television when Miller was about 14.

After watching Peterson's performance, Miller decided to become a pianist: "It was a life changing event. I knew right then that I would be a jazz pianist".

Miller later mentioned Art Tatum and Erroll Garner as piano influences during his teenage years.

Miller reported years later that he always found that playing fast was easy, so playing slowly and with more control were what he had to work hardest on.