Mulgrew Miller, pianist and composer

Jazz Threads performance date: September 27, 2003

Born 1955 in Greenwood, Mississippi

Getting started: There was a piano in the Miller household from the time Mulgrew was six, and he immediately started picking out tunes by ear. Formal training started at eight, and within a few years he was playing in church and going out on gigs with his older brother. He was interested in just about every kind of music—blues, country and western, gospel, R&B, classical—until a life-changing encounter with the artistry of jazz pianist Oscar Peterson.

Education: Memphis State University

Career highlights: One of the most recorded pianists on the jazz scene today, Mulgrew Miller's professional career started at age 20 when Mercer Ellington invited him to join the Duke Ellington Orchestra. He went on to play with two more well-known mentoring bandleaders—Betty Carter and Art Blakey (Jazz Messengers)—and then spent eight years with drummer Tony Williams' Quintet. By 1985, Miller was ready for his next big step—making his first recording as a bandleader. Throughout the 1990s, Miller's priority became his own ensembles and his own music. He's a standout for his power, lyricism, and imagination and he's a distinguished member of the "most respected by his peers" group of jazz friends and admirers.

Latest recording: Wingspan: The Sequel, Mulgrew Miller & Wingspan (2002, Maxjazz) No. 1 in the New York radio charts and No. 18 for the "100 most played recordings of 2002" "We wanted to get back to the real swing beat, maybe redefine it in our own way and make it prominent on the record so you can hear it right away." (Mulgrew Miller)

Influences: He's enjoyed a stable home—both as a child and as an adult. He's a vegetarian. Ray Charles sideman Rudolph Johnson introduced Miller to Eastern spirituality. Miller is devoted to the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., and the lessons of the civil rights movement profoundly affected his life growing up in Mississippi. These influences have shaped Mulgrew Miller as a person and as an artist.

It's all in the music: "Family, nature, and faith in the goodness of life, that's the feeling I want to represent in my music. I think the thing with me, and it is with most musicians, I want people to feel uplifted when they hear my music, to be inspired by beauty, power and intelligence. To me, if you're not doing that, you might as well pack up and go home."