Lloyd Miller’s Oriental Jazz – “an intense echo in an unfamiliar key”
Think of oriental jazz and titans like Don Cherry or Tony Scott might spring to mind. Unless you’re a serious collector, or have had your ears pricked by the incredible ‘Gol-e Gandom’ on the recent 'Spiritual Jazz' compilation on the Jazzman label, the name of Lloyd Miller will probably elude you. Where others dabbled Miller went deep to the source, traveling from his home in California to Tehran in 1959 where his total absorption in Persian music and culture resulted in some of the deepest and most prescient jazz of the period. However, whether it was scraping a living around the basements of Paris in the early 60s or having just 300 copies of his classic ‘Oriental Jazz’ LP pressed, Miller was never given the acclaim he deserved. Always working outside the mainstream, Miller was in the words of critic Francis Gooding “an intense echo in an unfamiliar key”. His complete immersion in the music of the East set him apart from other modal jazz voyagers, and it is perhaps this dedication to his art that has left Miller in the shadows. As he explains in “Music and Song In Persia”, the journey of the musician should be towards an ‘interior’ spiritual light rather than the ‘exterior’ of critical acclaim. “I don’t care if anyone ever knows Lloyd Miller,” he says. “If they can just feel a spark of joy from something I have recorded”.
partly inspired by http://and-a-half.blogspot.com/
In 1957, Miller went with his family to Iran where he stayed for a year before leaving for Europe to find his fate as a jazzman. In 1963, Miller returned to the U.S. after enjoying success with the famous Jeff Gilson band in Paris and began study at BYU in Utah.
After successful years in the jazz scene in Utah including winning Intercollegiate Jazz Festival composer / Aranger trophies for three consecutive years, during this time Miller was invited to perform at the famous first Woodstock Festival and the Phillidelphia Folk Festival.
Controversial post title taken from Polytheism.
