Mulgrew Miller was a jazz pianist, composer, and educator. As a child he played in churches and was influenced on piano by Ramsey Lewis and then Oscar Peterson. Aspects of their styles remained in his playing, but he added the greater harmonic freedom of McCoy Tyner and others in developing as a hard bop player and then in creating his own style, which influenced others from the 1980s on.
Miller was born in August 13, 1955 in Greenwood, Mississippi. The state was ground zero for the Civil Rights movement, and Mulgrew lived that history. Later, he shared lessons learned from those experiences and more with his students. For eight years until his unexpected death, Miller co-led Jazz Studies at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ, with his colleague David Demsey. WPU has one of the oldest jazz departments in the country. Some of his students called him Professor Mulgrew.
In the fall of 2002, the Kennedy Center in Washington transformed a former music library into a new performance space, the Kennedy Center Jazz Club. Mulgrew Miller and his Trio opened the room, and released the sets as CDs on the MAXJAZZ label. Mulgrew appeared on at least 500 recordings as a bandleader or sideman.
Mulgrew Miller passed away on May 29, 2013.