Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Myra Melford, born on January 5, 1957 in Evanston, Illinois is an avant-garde and post bop jazz pianist and composer. 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 and developed a strong relationship with her teacher, classically trained boogie-woogie player Erwin Helfer. He introduced her to classical composers such as Bach before moving on to contemporary composers, such as Bartok. He would later teach her to play the blues.
High school saw Myra attending Northwestern University extension program, enrolling in Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and studying environmental science. Although she wasn’t listening to jazz she knew it involved improvisation and a sign in a local restaurant for jazz piano lessons sparked her interest in music again. Shortly thereafter she changed her major to music and in 1980 attended Cornish College of the Arts under the tutelage of Art Lande and Gary Peacock.
While living in Olympia, Melford met prominent avant-garde musicians including Oliver Lake, Anthony Braxton Marty Ehrlich and Leroy Jenkins, whose performance with Amina Claudia Myers and Pharaoh Sanders intensified her commitment to improvisation.
A move in 1984 landed Medford in New York City where she studied composition with saxophonist Henry Threadgill, also studied privately with pianists Jaki Byard and Don Pullen, performed with Threadgill Jenkins and Butch Morris. In the late 80s she performed and recorded with flutist Marion Brandis, forming a trio and accelerating her career in the 90s as part of the first Knitting Factory tour of Europe. She recorded three albums with Lindsay Horner and Reggie Nicholson – Jump, Now & Now, and Alive in the House of Saints.
Later in the 90s, Myra moved toward larger groupings with diverse instrumentation, added trumpeter Dave Douglas and reed player Marty Ehrlich and created a quintet, the Myra Melford Extended Ensemble. She also formed a second five-piece, the Same River, and the self-titled debut album was released on Gramavision in 1996, followed by 1999’s Above Blue on Arabesque. She has performed with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and with Equal Interest, playing harmonium instead of piano.
Since 2000, Melford has formed and recorded as a trio, spent time in India studying harmonium, formed another ensemble to present her Indian studies, relocated to Berkeley, California accepting a professorship at UC Berkeley in contemporary improvisation. She formed Trio M and released another debut album in 2007 followed by a sophomore project in 2012
Myra has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Performing Artist Award, and Alpert Award in the Arts for Music, Jazz Journalist Association Pianist and Composer of the Year among others and has a small but impressive catalogue of eight albums and continues to perform, record and educate.
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