Lloyd Miller (musician)

Clifton Lloyd Miller ( born November 11, 1938 in Glendale ) is an American ethnomusicologist, arranger, composer and multi-instrumentalist ( and Others Zarb, oud, Kamancheh, Sehtar, santoor, piano, clarinet, flute, bass, tabla, vocals, percussion ), who is considered one of the pioneers of ethno-jazz.

Life and work

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

The year 1957 he spent with his family in Iran, which sparked his interest in traditional music instruments of the Middle East and Asia. 1958 Miller stepped in Iran and in Beirut on in hotels and worked as an arranger for various Lebanese jazz ensemble. From 1958 to 1963 years, he studied in Europe and earned at this stage his living as a jazz musician; he stayed in this phase not only in Geneva and Paris, where he studied Oriental Studies, but first traveled through West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium. In Frankfurt he Domicile giggte with Peter Trunk and Albert Mangelsdorff, and then to work in Mainz jazz cellar in a trio with Maffy Falay and George Solano, which played at sessions and Don Ellis and Eddie Harris and that occurred elsewhere. In Sweden, he worked with Bernt Rosengren, Lennart Jansson, Lars Färnlöf and Conny Lundin. With Jansson, Solano and Freddie Deronde he fancied International Jazz Quartet, which occurred in Belgium in 1960 and was occasionally reinforced by Philip Catherine. The quartet was invited to the festival in Comblain -la-Tour. Miller then went to Paris, where he found work in the Mars Club. He could also enter note as pianist Kenny Clarke occasionally in Paris jazz club Blue. He made ​​friends with Jef Gilson and took in 1961 with his septet; also made ​​his first recordings as separate title Pentalogic and Sahar E - Meh - Alude that were released in 1965 on the album Oriental Jazz. In Paris he studied with Daryush Safvat and Tran Van Khe at the Centre d' étude de la musique orientale at the Institut de Musicologie the Sorbonne and also with Émile Benveniste. Also (private and long time unpublished ) emerged during his time in Europe recordings in Sweden and Belgium among others with Bernt Rosengren, Freddie Deronde, Jacques Pelzer and Philip Catherine.

After his return to the United States he lived in Utah and attended Brigham Young University in Provo. There he compiled the formation Oriental Jazz Quartet, including the pianist Press Keys. Mid-1960s, he released his debut album Oriental Jazz. The recording session of his best-known title Gol -e Gandom was also shown in regional television. In the Intercollegiate Jazz Festival in Salt Lake City, he received from 1967 to 1969 awards for best arranger / composer and vocalist.

1967, Miller continued his studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he 1969 Masters in Middle East Studies acquired in order then to do a doctorate on Persian music. Around 1970 he received a grant for research in Iran; in the following seven years he traveled through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon and Turkey, otherwise he lived in Tehran, where he served as the magazine published in Beirut Middle East Sketch as a cultural journalist for British publishers. During this time he had under the pseudonym Kurosh Ali Khan own jazz television program in NIRTV in Tehran, where he also introduced jazz improvisations on the oud and the double bass. In 1977 he returned to the United States, where he in his doctoral thesis Music and Song in Persia: The Art of Avaz summarized the results of his field research. 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; so he arranged for the Utah Symphony Bunk Johnson Closer Walk with Thee, King Oliver's Dippermouth Blues and Bix Beiderbeckes Jazz Me Blues and the Colorado Springs Symphony A Night in Tunisia.

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

Publications (selection )

• Lloyd Miller and James Skipper: Sounds of Black Protest in avant-garde jazz. In: The Sounds of Social Change, ed R. Serge Denisoff and Richard Peterson. Chicago, Rand McNally, 1972
• Music and song in Persia: the art of Avaz Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999

Disco Graphical 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)
• A Lifetime in Oriental Jazz (2009, compilation )
• Lloyd Miller & The Heliocentrics ( Strut, 2010)

Filmography

• Lloyd Miller NIRTV shows, (Tehran 1970 )
• Lloyd Miller Trio on NIRTV, (Tehran 1970 )
• The Lloyd Miller Trio ( 2010) with Jake Ferguson, Malcolm Catto