Myra Melford | Artist
Myra Melford is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer born 1957 in Evanston, Illinois. 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." She is a prolific recording artist, having released solo works, ensemble works, and collaborations with artists such as Han Bennink, Marty Ehrlich, Satoko Fujii, Alister Spence, and Wynton Marsalis. Melford is also a member of avant-garde jazz groups Be Bread, Equal Interest, and Trio M. Born and raised in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Melford started playing the piano at the age of 3, climbing onto the piano bench and improvising. She took lessons in kindergarten, developing a strong relationship with her teacher, Erwin Helfer, a classically trained boogie-woogie 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 a Northwestern University extension program in junior high school, but described her experience as a classical piano student as "not right," and stopped formal studies in high school. She then enrolled at Evergreen State College Washington, intending to study environmental science, but when she saw an advertisement for jazz piano lessons in a local restaurant, she began studying again. She recalled, at that time, "There were two records which were on constant repeat: Cecil Taylor's Air Above Mountains and Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come." She soon switched her major to music, and in 1980 attended Cornish College of the Arts and studied with Art Land. Melford moved to NYC in 1984, where she studied composition with saxophonist Henry Threadgill, whom she would later cite as a major influence. There she performed with Threadgill, Leroy Jenkins, and Butch Morris, among others. In the late 1980s she played and recorded with flutist Marion Brandis, and formed a trio with bassist Lindsey Horner and drummer Reggie Nicholson. Her career accelerated in the early 1990s, as she participated in the first Knitting Factory tour of Europe. In 2000 she traveled to Calcutta to study harmonium with Sohanlal Sharma as a Fulbright scholar. She spent several months with Sharma, focusing on raga and Hindustani classical music, and continued her studies with other musicians in Delhi and Rajistan, and with Sudhir Nayak in Mumbai. 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 artist Don Reich. From her extensive discography, other standout albums include Even the Sounds Shine (1995), The Same River Twice (1996), Above Blue (1999), Where the Two World Touch (2004), Life Carries Me This Way (2013), Snowy Egret (2015), and Alive in the House of Saints (1993). Also recommended are The Image of Your Body (2006) and The Whole Tree Gone (2010), with the group Be Bread. 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. Looking back on her career, Melford explained how thirty years ago, she saw Cy Twombly: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition of 50 paintings, works on paper, sculptures and prints, left her gobsmacked. “I just remember thinking, Wow, this feels like how I want to play the piano,” explaining an attraction to musical improvisation that has only deepened since.
Artist Website: myramelford.com/
Featured Albums: Myra Melford
Related Artists: Myra Melford Trio, Be Bread, Equal Interest
