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   » » Wiki: Myra Melford
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Myra Melford (born January 5, 1957) is an American pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for."


Early life and education
Melford was born in Evanston, Illinois and was raised in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. At 3, she started playing the piano on her own, climbing onto the piano bench and improvising. She began taking lessons when she was in kindergarten. She developed a strong relationship with her teacher, , a classically trained player. Helfer introduced her to classical composers such as Bach before moving on to contemporary composers, such as Bartók, and later taught her to play the blues. Melford attended blues festivals, and because of her relationship with Helfer, she was often invited backstage, where she encountered many of Chicago's most acclaimed performers. Independently, Melford also began to explore improvisation.

Pushed towards performing classical repertoire, Melford attended a Northwestern University extension program in junior high school. She described her experience as a classical piano student as "not right," and while she continued to play informally, she stopped her formal studies in high school.

Melford enrolled at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where she intended to study environmental science. Although she was not then listening to jazz, and had not grown up listening to it, she knew that it involved improvisation, and when she saw an advertisement for jazz piano lessons in a local restaurant, she began studying again. She recalled that, during the next few years, "There were two records... which were on constant repeat: 's Air Above Mountains and 's The Shape of Jazz to Come." Shortly thereafter, she switched her major to music, and in 1980 attended Cornish College of the Arts and studied with and .

While living in Olympia, Melford met prominent avant-garde musicians including , , and Leroy Jenkins, whose performance with Amina Claudine Myers and inspired an "ecstatic feeling" which intensified her commitment to improvisation.


Career
Melford moved to New York City in 1984, where she studied composition with saxophonist , whom she would later cite as a major influence on her perception of organic composition. She also studied privately with pianists and , whose percussive mannerisms she adapted.

After arriving in New York, Melford performed in the bands of Threadgill, Leroy Jenkins, and , among others. In the late 1980s she played and recorded with flutist Marion Brandis, and formed a trio with bassist and drummer . Her career accelerated in the early 1990s, as she participated in the first tour of Europe, and recorded three albums with Horner and Nicholson: Jump (1990), Now & Now (1991), and Alive in the House of Saints, a live album, in 1993.

Later in the 1990s, Melford moved toward larger groupings with diverse instrumentation, and added trumpeter Dave Douglas and reed player to her trio lineup to create a quintet, the Myra Melford Extended Ensemble. She also formed a second five-piece, the Same River, Twice, featuring Douglas, cellist , reed player , and drummer . Their self-titled debut album was released on Gramavision in 1996, followed by 1999's on Arabesque. Melford also appeared as an improvisational collaborator on the 1996 Hatology release , featuring duets performed with Dutch drummer ; and , a 1999 Omnitone release by the trio of the same name, featuring Melford with Jenkins and of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. With Equal Interest, Melford performed on as well as piano. By the close of the decade, Melford had become one of the downtown jazz scene's most celebrated performers and composers, with the describing her in 1999 as an "explosive pianist who alternately caresses and pounds the keyboard and weaves brilliant swatches of composed material into free-form improvisation."

In 2000, Melford formed Crush, a trio in which she played piano and harmonium with on drums and on electric bass. Arabesque released the trio's Dance Beyond the Color later that year. In September, she traveled to Calcutta to study harmonium with Sohanlal Sharma as a Fulbright scholar. She spent several months with Sharma, focusing on and Hindustani classical music, and continued her studies with other musicians in Delhi and Rajistan. She additionally studied with in Mumbai.

After returning to the United States, Melford lived at an upstate New York ashram. She subsequently formed an ensemble expressly to play music based on her studies in India, Myra Melford's Be Bread. Although it remained unreleased until 2006, Be Bread's debut album, The Image of Your Body (whose title was derived from a poem), was recorded in 2003, as was Where the Two Worlds Touch by Myra Melford's The Tent, released by Arabesque.

Melford relocated to Berkeley, California in 2004 to accept a position as Professor of contemporary improvisational music, University of California Berkeley. In 2006, along with bassist and drummer Matt Wilson, Melford formed Trio M, who released their debut album, The Big Picture, on Cryptogramophone in 2007. It was followed by The Guest House on Enja/Yellowbird in 2012.

Melford performs with clarinetist/composer Ben Goldberg, who she met just after she moved to Berkeley, in the duo Dialogue. Melford formed a new quintet, Snowy Egret, featuring bassist Takeishi, guitarist , trumpeter , and drummer in 2012. In October, Melford won the 2012 Alpert Award for "her ascending and expansive trajectory, great, generous musical mind and her ability to take multiple musical traditions into another sphere."

Melford released her first solo album in October 2013. Titled Life Carries Me This Way, the album is a collection of work inspired by the paintings of the late visual artist Don Reich. That same year, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow and received both the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Performing Artist Award and a Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts for her efforts to re-imagine the jazz program at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; in November, Snowy Egret performed the music for Melford's multimedia project Language of Dreams, at the center.

At Berkeley, Melford has developed and taught a series of courses in contemporary jazz and improvisation-based music for performers and composers in addition to lecturing on innovations in jazz since the 1960s and other topics in contemporary improvised music.


Selected honors, fellowships, and awards
  • Guggenheim Fellowship (2013)
  • Charitable Foundation's Performing Artist Award (2013)
  • Alpert Award in the Arts for Music (2012)
  • Jazz Journalists Association Pianist of the Year (2008, 2009)
  • Jazz Journalists Association Composer of the Year (2004)
  • Fulbright scholar (2000)
  • New York Foundation for the Arts Composition Fellowship (1998,2002, 2008)
  • Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Commissioning grant (2003)


Discography

As leader/co-leader
An asterisk indicates that the year is that of release.

1990JumpTrio, with (bass), (drums)
1991Now & NowTrio, with (bass), (drums)
1993Alive in the House of Saintshat ARTTrio, with (bass), (drums); in concert
1994hatOLOGYDuo, co-led with (drums)
1994The October RevolutionOne track features a trio led by Melford, with (bass) and (drums). Melford does not appear on the remaining tracks. In concert.
1995Even the Sounds Shinehat ARTQuintet, with Dave Douglas (trumpet), (alto sax, clarinet), (bass), (drums)
1996The Same River, TwiceGramavisionQuintet, with Dave Douglas (trumpet), (tenor sax, clarinet), (cello), (drums)
1998ArabesqueQuintet, with Dave Douglas (trumpet), (tenor sax, clarinet), (cello), (drums)
1999Dance Beyond the ColorArabesqueTrio, with (electric bass, guitars), (drums); Melford plays harmonium on three tracks
2000Yet Can SpringArabesqueDuo, co-led with (alto sax, bass clarinet, clarinet)
2002HexZerxwith J. A. Deane and Joseph Sabella
2003Where the Two Worlds TouchArabesqueQuintet, with (trumpet), (clarinet, tenor sax), (guitars), (drums); Melford also plays harmonium
2003The Image of Your BodyCryptogramophoneQuartet, most tracks with (guitar, vocals), (bass guitar), Elliot Humberto Kavee (drums); some tracks with (trumpet, electronics), Takeishi, Kavee; Melford also plays harmonium
2006Big PictureCryptogramophoneTrio, as "Trio M", with (bass), Matt Wilson (drums)
2007*Spark!Duo, co-led with (alto sax, clarinet)
2007*Heart MountainPerspicacityDuo, co-led with Tanya Kalmanovitch (viola, violin); Melford also plays harmonium
2007Under the WaterLibraCo-led with (piano); three tracks duo; one track each solo piano; in concert
2010*The Whole Tree GoneFirehouse 12Sextet, with (trumpet), (clarinet, contra-alto clarinet), (guitars), (bass guitar), Matt Wilson (drums)
2011The Guest HouseYellowbirdTrio, as "Trio M", with (bass), Matt Wilson (drums)
2012Everything Here Is PossibleASMDuo, co-led with (piano); in concert
2013Life Carries Me This WayFirehouse 12Solo piano
2013Snowy EgretEnja/YellowbirdQuintet, with (cornet), (guitar), (bass), (drums); in concert
2014DialogueBAG ProductionDuo, co-led with (clarinet)
201512 from 25Firehouse 12With various; in concert
2016UnleashedTrio, as "Tiger Trio", with Nicole Mitchell (flutes), Joëlle Léandre (bass); in concert
2017*MZMTrio, with (harp), (koto)
2017The Other Side of AirFirehouse 12Quintet, with (cornet), (guitar), (bass), (drums)
2018Map of LiberationTrio, as "Tiger Trio", with Nicole Mitchell (flutes), Joëlle Léandre (bass); in concert
2021For the Love of Fire and WaterQuintet, with (guitar), (cello), (sax), (drums)
2023Hear the Light SingingQuintet, with (guitar), (cello), (sax), Lesley Mok (drums)


As sidewoman
With and Leroy Jenkins With Allison Miller (drummer)
  • Boom Tic Boom (2010)
  • Boom Tic Boom Live at Willisau (2012)
  • No Morphine, No Lilies (2013)
  • Otis Was A Polar Bear (2016)
  • Glitter Wolf (2019)
With
  • 96 Gestures (2001)
With
  • Song Out of My Trees (Black Saint, 1994)
  • Makin' a Move (Columbia, 1995)


External links

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