How dare we spend so much valuable energy answering such questions as "What is Jazz?".
WILLIAM PARKER
, SOUND JOURNAL
Over the course of two decades and more than 30 recordings, Myra Melford has carved out a distinctive niche among creative music’s most respected pianist-composers. Her signature sound skillfully combines early influences such as classical music and the traditional blues piano styles of her native Chicago with her later immersion in the music of Eastern Europe and India and extensive musical studies with such legendary figures as Ran Blake, Jaki Byard, Don Pullen and Henry Threadgill.Her current projects include a duo with clarinetist Ben Goldberg, the all-star collective Trio M featuring Mark Dresser and Matt Wilson, and her new quintet Snowy Egret, which interprets an original book of music inspired by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire Trilogy. She also performs a series of original solo piano pieces based on the drawings of celebrated Sacramento-based artist Don Reich. Since 2004, she has also served on the faculty of the University of California Berkeley, where she develops and teaches courses about contemporary improvised music.
