Marcus Miller

One of the main stars of the autumn part of JazzFestBrno has been among the most important jazz—and beyond—instrumentalists, producers, and composers since the 1980s. Major figures like trumpeter Miles Davis and singer Luther Vandross entrusted him with their music.

Marcus Miller is one of those musicians blessed with innate musical talent, nurtured from childhood in a musically inclined family. He studied classical clarinet, but over the course of his life, he also mastered keyboards, saxophone, guitar, and of course, his number one instrument: the bass guitar.

For many years, Marcus Miller worked as an acclaimed sideman in New York recording studios, an experience that served as a profound musical education for him as a musician, producer, and composer. At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, he was also a member of the house band for Saturday Night Live, America’s most-watched television show. The list of artists he has supported is nothing short of impressive, including Michael Jackson, Herbie Hancock, Eric Clapton, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Frank Sinatra, and George Benson. He collaborated extensively with saxophonist Grover Washington Jr., recording six albums together in the 1980s, and with soul singer Luther Vandross, with whom he recorded no fewer than a dozen albums—many of them produced by Miller and often featuring his songwriting contributions. As a longtime collaborator with saxophonist David Sanborn, Miller helped shape fifteen of Sanborn’s albums during the 1980s and 1990s. A chapter unto itself was his work with Miles Davis: Marcus Miller was instrumental in one of Davis’s major “resurrections,” producing the Tutu album and writing its title track, which has since become a Davis standard. Miller also produced Davis’s subsequent albums Music from Siesta and Amandla, and contributed as an instrumentalist to three Davis albums preceding Tutu.

Given this extensive résumé, it might seem that Marcus Miller sacrificed his own solo career for the benefit of others, but that is not the case. Interestingly, at the beginning of the 1980s, his solo debut was primarily vocal: on his first two albums, he presented himself mainly as a singer and songwriter, and only secondarily as an instrumentalist. This approach, however, was never repeated, and on his later albums, vocals appear only sporadically. It is in instrumental music that Marcus Miller’s true strength lies—a fact confirmed by his Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album for M² in 2001. Fourteen years later, his album Afrodeezia was nominated for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album.