Michael J. Miles
“Give the banjo to Michael J. Miles and you’ll hear a mighty soul-stirring sound.”
— Chicago Sun-Times
Michael J. Miles is a musician, writer and educator whose curiosity and creativity are undeniably one-of-a-kind. Imagine Bach on the 5-string banjo, the fretless, sweaty blues of the 1930’s and the inspired folk music revolution of Bob Dylan. Miles has been celebrated for his virtuosity, but it’s his love of music, literature, history and politics that inspires him. As a folk music hunter-gatherer and boundless genre-bender, you’ll be surprised by what he plays next.
“Rhythm and melody are what matters,” says Miles, “that’s why Woody Guthrie can follow Mick Jagger, or an Appalachian waltz can follow Take Five.”
Miles has been awarded an Individual Artist Grants by the City of Chicago in 2018, 2019, 2020 and again in 2022 for new musical compositions. The legendary Old Town School of Folk Music honored him as the “2018 Musician and Educator of the Year.” In 2021, his newest CD, Mississippi River Suite charted at #9 on the National Folk Charts.
Chicago is home and always will be. Yet from Dublin to Dubuque, Casablanca to Castle Rock, Beirut to Barcelona—Miles’ musical collaborations have taken him around the world. Some of his more illustrious collaborators include Pete Seeger, Bela Fleck, Darol Anger and jazz singer Jackie Allen.
In performance, Michael offers five distinct programs: — From American Bach; Mississippi River Suite; Senegal To Seeger; Miles and King as well as solo acoustic concerts. Midwest Records described Michael J. Miles as “Chicago’s best kept secret.”
Michael J. Miles, solo acoustic turns the stage into the living room of a Chicago Irish household where everyone sang, told stories and talked politics. Clawhammer banjo, fingerstyle guitar, songs across the centuries, stories from the bar and the streets of everywhere. The Midwest Record wrote, “Miles is Chicago’s best kept secret...one of the leading lights of contemporary instrumental music.”
Michael J. Miles and Lloyd Brodnax King have played together for nearly 40 years and have a musical dynamic loaded with clarity and compelling set lists. Repertoire includes sparkling originals along with 500 years of hit songs. Matt Watroba of WKAR praised, “Compelling improvisations. Great sounds, great songs, and great musicianship.”
American Bach imagines Bach on the banjo. When music critic Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune heard composer/musician Michael J. Miles play Bach, he said that “Miles has taken some of the most profound and dramatic music ever written and succeeded” Miles is the only banjo player to both record and perform entire Cello Suites of JS Bach. He was encouraged by Yo-Yo Ma and Janos Starker (1924-2013), one of the greatest cellists of all time. Regarding Miles' work, Starker said, “This is amazing…a remarkable feat,” to which Yo-Yo Ma added, “Thanks for the music you make.” Miles is joined by renowned cellist, Jill Kaeding, playing an accompanying bass line.
Mississippi River Suite is an extensive and highly acclaimed work by Miles that features original poetry, accompanied by original music. The premise of the work, composed in 2018-19, was to use the river that ‘divides that nation’ as a premise for a musical portrait of a ‘divided nation.’ Commissioned by the City of Chicago, Mississippi River Suite, is of the moment. Through the impassioned readings of storyteller, performance artist and singer Zahra Glenda Baker, Michael’s views on race, our current political situation, inclusion, exclusion, and much more are artfully made clear. The breadth of Michael’s vision is truly breathtaking. As Howard Reich, jazz critic for the Chicago Tribune has said, “The man clearly does not dream small.”
From Senegal To Seeger: Songs & Stories of the American Banjo is Miles’ acclaimed one-man show featuring musical and written works of Pete Seeger, Carl Sandburg, Woody Guthrie, Walt Whitman, Johann Sebastian Bach, Mark Twain and others. Protest songs, fiddle tunes, minstrel sounds and a dazzling array of banjo playing forms the backbone of From Senegal to Seeger, but it is the poetic words and Miles’ masterfully woven narrative that complete this portrait of the American experience resulting in “an exhilarating, musical and multi-dimensional journey….a provocative political and social history of America.”