Myra Melford: Original Compostions And Improvisations For Solo Piano at Follen Community Church

Myra Melford emerged in the early ‘90s as one of the most highly acclaimed young jazz pianists and composers of the day. Her career has been defined by a restless curiosity and openness to collaborative creativity that is reflected in her highly personal, idiosyncratic style, which incorporates such wide-ranging influences as Chicago blues, Zen Buddhism and the “organic philosophy” of Frank Lloyd Wright. She has recorded prolifically, and her previous bands such as The Same River, Twice and Be Bread are featured on several recordings, along with the collective Trio M with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson, and her duets with woodwind virtuoso Marty Ehrlich and Dutch drum legend Han Bennink...

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Myra Melford emerged in the early ‘90s as one of the most highly acclaimed young jazz pianists and composers of the day. Her career has been defined by a restless curiosity and openness to collaborative creativity that is reflected in her highly personal, idiosyncratic style, which incorporates such wide-ranging influences as Chicago blues, Zen Buddhism and the “organic philosophy” of Frank Lloyd Wright. She has recorded prolifically, and her previous bands such as The Same River, Twice and Be Bread are featured on several recordings, along with the collective Trio M with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson, and her duets with woodwind virtuoso Marty Ehrlich and Dutch drum legend Han Bennink. Other recent releases, are her first piano solo album, Life Carries Me This Way, inspired by the drawings of her friend, the late Don Reich, and the duet recording Dialogue with clarinetist Ben Goldberg, along two new trios: MZM with Miya Masaoka and Zeena Parkins, and Tiger Trio with Nicole Mitchell and Joelle Leandre. Melford was the recipient of the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts for Music in 2012, a Guggenheim Fellowship, for Language of Dreams, and a Doris Duke Performing Artists Award in 2013. A professor of composition and improvisational practices at U.C. Berkeley since 2004, she was recently an artist-in-residence at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. 2018 sees three releases from Firehouse 12 Records: a beautifully pressed vinyl release of her solo, Life Carries Me This Way; a DVD of her 6-night retrospective at the Stone in 2015 including a 30-minute documentary about the event and one piece from each of the 12 sets of music; and the second recording by her quintet, Snowy Egret, which was awarded Mid-size Ensemble of the year in 2016 by the Jazz Journalists Association.

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