Jazz Pianist Mulgrew Miller: "I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world!"

Mulgrew Miller got his break and ran with it
Sunday News (Lancaster, PA)
by MaryAlice Bitts

In 1969, a 14-year-old piano student in Greenwood, Miss., switched on the family television set to watch an episode of "The Joey Bishop Show," featuring jazz piano great Oscar Peterson. It was a quiet evening at home, like many others, but that night, sitting in front of the TV, young Mulgrew Miller's life changed.

"I didn't realize that the piano could be played so creatively, with such virtuosity and sophistication. It was everything I needed to hear at the time," Miller said in a telephone interview. "It hit me where I lived. The next day I was a different person."

Miller is now one of the most respected pianists of his generation. This Saturday, he'll demonstrate why, when the Mulgrew Miller Trio (Miller on piano, Rodney Green on drums and Ivan Taylor on bass) takes the stage at Mount Gretna Playhouse for the final concert of Music at Gretna's 2007 summer series.

"We'll play a wide variety of pieces, including bebop, standards and originals," said Miller, who selects pieces that span his three decades as a professional pianist.

Born in 1955, Miller first began tinkering on the keyboard at age 6, when his father brought home an upright in the hope that his five children would learn to play.

"Most of my siblings took lessons, but not right away, because there were no music teachers near where we lived," Miller said. "So I didn't have classical lessons until I was 8."

A year later, Miller began to perform in church, and soon after, he formed a rhythm-and-blues band that performed at teen dances. By the time he caught the jazz bug at 14, he knew where his true passions lay, but when he set off for college, he decided to pursue a more practical career and studied to become an English teacher.

Given the alarmingly unprofitable, often turbulent lives of talented musicians the world over, this seemed a perfectly reasonable decision. It also was a very temporary one.

During Miller's sophomore year, a friend recommended him as a piano substitute for Duke Ellington's orchestra, and he jumped at the opportunity.

"It was a huge, huge break," Miller recalled. "I was just 21, and I was meeting all of these seasoned and great musicians. I played sporadically, on weekends, and three years later, they asked me to formally join the band."

The gig gained Miller entry into the New York jazz scene of the late 1970s, an extreme, exclusive and sometimes exotic culture that he looks back on as "a circus." From there, his career was on the fast track.

Over the years, Miller has performed with distinguished artists including Betty Carter, Woody Shaw, Art Blakey, Daniel Carter, Benny Goldson and James Moody. Along the way, he has played on approximately 500 recordings, and the New York Times hailed him as "the most in-demand, sensitive and versatile" jazz pianist of his era.

"I'm fortunate enough that it would be easier to name the people I haven't played with," he said with a chuckle. "I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world."

Twenty years ago, he formed his own trio - a partnership that brings him particular satisfaction.
"In a trio, you have to have a willingness to be a team player, to be able to contribute to the overall workings of the group. I get so much joy out of that," he said. "When everybody in the band is united toward one aim, that makes for an exhilarating performance."

Those moments keep him motivated and optimistic. So while some lament the marginalization of jazz, Miller holds fast to the musical form that captured his imagination as a child.

"There's a view out there that jazz is being stamped out by commercial music and pop culture, but I can truly say that the dream is constantly being replenished by young and vital talents who are coming in almost every day," said Miller, who cites his young bandmates as living proof.

"I think that we can be confident that jazz is in good hands, and that, in some form or fashion, it will survive."