Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Court Mast was born Corky Miller on August 24, 1951 in Sunnyvale, California, where he took up the accordion and then trumpet in grade school. He went to Fremont High School, graduating in 1969. He traveled to Europe on tour with 120 high school and college musicians. Trumpet great Raphael Mendez was on board as guest artist, and Corky took six weeks of private lessons from the master. Returning to the Bay Area, he began performing in big bands around the South Bay and Peninsula and performed with the earliest version of the band that went on to fame as Tower of Power.

While taking performance and composition courses at De Anza College, Corky stayed active in a wide variety of bands, playing rock, jazz, Latin and Mexican music that kept this young working trumpeter onstage. By 1977 he moved to San Francisco, California where he led quartet and quintet jazz groups active on the North Beach music scene and in funky venues like the Hotel Utah.

Disillusioned with the direction that popular music, and jazz in particular, was moving in, in 1983 Miller stepped away from the music world. He became a surfer, changed his name to Court Mast, got into photography and became one of San Francisco’s leading commercial photographers. Then in the first decade of the new century his love of music returned and in 2008 he recorded his debut album Sausalito Summer

Composer and cornetist Court Mast, whose influences have been Henry Mancini, Chuck Mangione, Maurice Ravel, Duke Ellington, the Beatles, Steely Dan, Clifford Brown and Thad Jones, continues to compose and perform as well as maintain his photography.

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