Line-up

Headliner
Marcus Miller Last time in SF Bay Area: 1 year ago

Venue

201 Franklin St., 94102, San Francisco, CA, US

Marcus Miller biography

Marcus Miller is an American jazz composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist originally from Brooklyn who has worked with some of the music industries most celebrated artists.

Miller spent approximately 15 years performing as a session musician using his classic training on the clarinet, keyboard, saxophone and guitar to learn the crafts of the performing musician. He gained many wonderful opportunities during this time, including being part of the Saturday Night Live band from 1978 and 1979 and writing a track for the queen of soul Aretha Franklin.

He has also contributed bass on recording by Luther Vandross, Roberta Flack, Carly Simon and Bryan Ferry to name a few and his impressive contact list won him the Most Valuable Player award from NARAS three years in a row.

It wasn't until the 1990s that Miller decided to focus on his own music and began to assemble his own band for touring commitments. He has released over twenty albums to date and his tours are incredibly popular in mainland Europe and Japan.

In 1997 Miller took a short break from his solo work to become part of a collaborative project entitled Legends headed up by Eric Clapton. It also featured pianist Joe Sample, saxophone player David Sanborn and drummer Steve Gadd. The group took part in eleven major jazz festivals throughout Europe.

Miller has had equal success in the film industry, scoring huge box office successes such as 'The Great White Hype' 'The Trumpet of the Swan' 'Head Of State' and most recently 'Obsessed' featuring Beyoncé Knowles.

Live reviews

Marcus Miller is a legend in American jazz, and has played with musicians like Miles Davis, Luther Vandross, Frank Sinatra, and Michael Jackson. As such, I went into the concert expecting nothing less than one of the best to ever play jazz and he fully lived up to that billing.

The atmosphere in the building was unique and kind of hard to describe; mostly, it felt like everybody was upbeat, having a great time, and yet making sure to soak everything in and appreciate that they were listening to one of the titans of jazz music. As to be expected from such a big name, the venue was huge but the acoustics were great and all of the details and subtleties of the notes carried throughout the whole room.

Every single musician he had on stage with him was also a master of his art, and so the amount of pure musical talent collected in one place was really remarkable.

I was only a casual jazz fan before going to this show but listening to Marcus Miller and everybody he had playing with him converted me into a complete, rabid jazz fanatic. As proof of the man’s love for music, he still tours a lot even nowadays, so there is absolutely no excuse not to see him in person.

Anonymous