Art Lande, Mark Miller Duo
Active:
Prehistoric to present
Recordings:
Prayers, Germs and Obsessions
World Without Cars
What Is ... Live from Seattle
Personnel:
Art Lande - piano, drums
Mark Miller - flute, saxophone, shakuhachi
Listen
News
Read Reviews
Art Lande and Mark Miller have performed and recorded together for more than forty years since first meeting in Lande’s seminal San Francisco Bay Area band Rubisa Patrol . Their music, both composed and improvised, is intimate and immediate, drawing on elements of jazz and contemporary classical genres. Their improvisations are compositional in their clarity and precision, tightly constructed works that include gorgeous melodies, spicy dissonances and a colorful harmonic palette. Lande and Miller draw inspiration from a wide variety of influences from Bach to Schumann and Debussy, from Monk to Coltrane and Cage.
News
Being Music - the Art of Improvisation
Dec 2020
A new book by Mark Miller in collaboration with Art Lande, focuses on the intersection of how
we
live and how
we
play. Mark and Art feel it will be of interest to professional musicians. music educators, music students, and performers in general.
Mark contributes a buddist's perspective and Art contributes parallels with sports.
Listen
Get your aural glimpse of the Duo through these audio excerpts:
Osmogulosis Pleontis
by Art Lande. Composed sections are followed by open improvisation on flute and piano.
Prayers, Germs and Obsessions #10
by Art Lande and Mark Miller. Spontaneous improvisation- no predetermined form.
Animal, Animal
by Art Lande and Mark Miller.
Spoken word improvisation- no predetermined form.
Prayers, Germs and Obsessions #11
by Art Lande and Mark Miller. Spontaneous improvisation- no predetermined form.
Unknown Whippet
by Art Lande and Mark Miller. Spontaneous improvisation- no predetermined form.
Reviews
Cadence Magazine
There are various manners of integrating modern classical (some would say “European”) and contemporary improvisatory (some would say “American Jazz”) techniques. [World Without Cars] represents a success of the highest order. ...What makes a great piece of music is the unanalyzable property of containing all and only the right sounds at the right time. This characteristic is beautifully exemplified. The written-out compositions on World Without Cars would fit equally well in a classical recital format; they are elegant, tightly-constructed chamber works for flute or sax and piano. But there is also plenty of dazzling Jazz blowing here.... Though I mention Barber, I hesitate to compare Lande’s writing too closely to Barber’s (or Rorem’s), because I think Lande is a much more interesting composer. His pieces are more adventurous and make use of a greater diversity of rhythmic and harmonic means.
San Francisco Examiner
Lande and Miller have studied, performed and taught together for 20 years; they think and play with like minds. Their musical sound is not essentially jazz, since the fragments of melodic lines which provide the stepping- stones (as it were) along whose musical path the performance proceeds are more likely to remind the listener of, say, Schoenberg, Stockhausen or Cecil Taylor than Ellington, Monk or Miles Davis. But the Lande-Miller duos’ spirit and improvisations, based on charts, are definitely jazz. They play long suite-like works, weaving their sounds together through 20 to 30 minutes of playing. It’s weird and wonderful piano stuff, particularly in tandem with Miller’s alto flute or soprano sax expressions. Meters, rhythms, key signatures, gorgeous melodies (and chords) and spicy dissonances come and go, with Lande and Miller shifting the lead when the mood suits, modal style. Sunday’s Maybeck performance [was] a mesmerizing spiritual experience....