Jason Miles

Jason Miles has earned recognition on the charts along with multiple awards through his work as a composer, keyboardist, bandleader, producer, and arranger. A tireless explorer of sound, he has moved fluidly between jazz, fusion, and R&B while also embracing pop, Brazilian traditions, children’s music, and country, whether leading his own ensembles, supporting others, or joining forces on collaborative projects. In 1986 he handled synthesizer programming for Miles Davis’s Grammy-winning Tutu. His initial release under his own name arrived with the well-received jazz-funk album World Tour in 1994. He has lent his abilities to numerous prominent musicians as well. The 2000 project Love Affair: The Music of Ivan Lins and the collection Celebrating the Music of Weather Report earned praise for both their conceptual depth and polished realization. In 2005 Miles to Miles: In the Spirit of Miles Davis paid homage to the trumpeter’s groundbreaking vision. He extended the same gesture to Marvin Gaye with What’s Going On? Songs of Marvin Gaye in 2007. Released in 2008, To Grover, With Love presented a star-studded jazz-funk salute to his longtime employer and musical associate. An enduring enthusiast of electronic music, Miles established the ensemble Global Noize to examine its possibilities within a world-music framework; the group’s debut, Prayer for the Planet, surfaced in 2011. He later teamed with trumpeter Ingrid Jensen to create Kind of New, whose self-titled first recording attracted notice from both London club DJs and jazz reviewers. The next year he brought To Grover, With Love to audiences across the Pacific, resulting in the live document To Grover, With Love: Live in Japan.

Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Jason Miles studied at Indiana State University during the 1970s. At the peak of the fusion era he returned to New York, immersing himself in the city’s session environment and steadily earning the trust of fellow innovators in the demanding realm of electronic music. His inventive synthesizer techniques secured a firm place in the fusion movement that dominated the decade. In 1979 he recorded his first project as a leader, Cosmopolitan, which included bassist Marcus Miller and trumpeter Michael Brecker. Although the album remained unreleased, it launched an enduring professional partnership with both musicians. A steadfast proponent of electronic music, Miles has maintained a respected presence on the New York studio circuit since the 1980s, serving as a preferred keyboard programmer and performer for such leading artists as Luther Vandross, Marcus Miller, Whitney Houston, Chaka Khan, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, David Sanborn, and Michael Jackson.

In 1984 Miles programmed synthesizers for Marcus Miller’s Jamaica Boys and maintained a close working relationship with Miller through 1994. During that productive stretch the pair collaborated on eight Vandross recordings and, in 1986, supplied the signature synthesizer work for Miles Davis’s Tutu. The same effort strengthened Miles’s ties to then Warner Bros. executive producer Tommy LiPuma and co-producer and musical arranger George Duke. He also assisted Miller on Davis’s soundtrack Music from Siesta in 1986 and on Amandla in 1989.

The 1990s marked a decisive shift for Miles as a synthesist. Successive assignments for high-profile artists, among them longtime associate Michael Brecker’s Now You See It…Now You Don’t in 1990, Whitney Houston’s I’m Your Baby Tonight also in 1990, Vandross’s The Power of Love in 1991, and Michael Jackson’s HIStory in 1995, brought his achievements in both pop and jazz to broader attention.

Two early solo efforts, World Tour in 1994 and Mr. X in 1995, introduced Miles as a bandleader; he enlisted longtime colleagues Grover Washington, Jr., Herbie Mann, Steve Ferrone, and Michael Brecker for those dates. Yet his most significant breakthrough as producer, composer, arranger, and performer came through his association with the Telarc Jazz label in the late 1990s.

Miles has also ventured into other media, composing the award-winning score for the animated feature The Snow Queen. In 1995 he produced and co-wrote the music for the Emmy-nominated animated film People: A Musical Celebration of Diversity for the Disney Channel. In 1997 he and his wife Kathy Byalick issued the new-age recording Visionary Path, which featured narration by then-unknown Diana Krall along with award-winning vocalists Roberta Flack and Nona Hendryx and actor F. Murray Abraham. He further produced an award-winning children’s video for Phylicia Rashad’s Rhymin’ Time.

In 2000 the label issued his widely praised The Music of Weather Report, a star-studded tribute to the innovative and influential fusion ensemble of the 1970s. In 2001 Miles received a Grammy for his production of A Love Affair: The Music of Ivan Lins. Describing it as “the dream record of my life,” the album drew contributions from Sting, Vanessa Williams, Brenda Russell, and Lins himself. The third tribute in that series, recorded for Q Records and titled To Grover, With Love, earned a Record of the Year nomination from the National Smooth Jazz Awards in 2002.

Miles attributes his consistent success as a producer to his reliability: “When you do stuff and you make it work, people eventually stop doubting your ability to pull it all together.” That same integrity and regard for craft are evident on his 2002 Q Records release Brazilian Nights Featuring Romero Lubambo, which once again unites elite musicians to interpret some of Brazil’s most celebrated songs.

Continuing his pattern of tribute recordings, Miles delivered Miles to Miles: In the Spirit of Miles Davis in 2005. A year later he focused on another idol with What’s Going On? Songs of Marvin Gaye. His subsequent album, Soul Summit in 2007, captured an all-star ensemble that included Susan Tedeschi, Karl Denson, Maysa, and others performing live at the 2007 Berks Jazz Fest in Reading, Pennsylvania.

In 2015 Miles joined forward-thinking trumpeter Ingrid Jensen for Kind of New, featuring material associated with Davis and his influence. The concert recording To Grover with Love: Live in Japan appeared in 2016. Following the deadly Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in Paris, Miles reassembled Kind of New to express solidarity with the French people. With Jensen occupied elsewhere, he enlisted four trumpeters—Russell Gunn, Theo Croker, Patches Stewart, and Jukka Eskola—each shaped by Davis yet possessed of strong individual voices. Guitarist Ricardo Silveira, saxophonist Jeff Coffin, vocalist Maya Azucena, and Ricky Kej, who contributed various Indian instruments including tabla, high tabla, santoor, and dumbek, also participated. The core rhythm section comprised Gene Lake on drums, Reggie Washington and Adam Dorn (aka Mocean Worker) on bass, Jay Rodrigues on tenor sax and bass clarinet, and Vinnie Zummo on guitar. Issued by Lightyear Entertainment in 2017, the resulting album was titled Kind of New 2: Blue Is Paris.

Throughout 2019 Miles developed another Kind of New project. Released in early 2020 as Black Magic, the album retained essentially the same personnel and combined fresh studio tracks with live renditions of earlier material.