James Miller and Friends

James Miller is the Associate Principal Trombone with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a position he has held since 1999. His duties include performing on alto, tenor, and bass trombone; tenor tuba; and bass trumpet. His previous orchestral experience includes the North Carolina Symphony, the Long Island Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic. Miller earned his Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Northern Iowa and his Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School, where he was a scholarship student of Per Brevig.

His playing experience includes performances with the Silk Road Ensemble, the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, Ensemble ST-X, the Michael Bublé Big Band, and a variety of jazz, rock, ska, and latin ensembles. He has been a participant in the Mainly Mozart Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Banff Institute and the Ojai Music Festival as well as performing as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series and before several orchestras internationally. As a composer, he has had world premieres in New York’s Lincoln Center and continues to perform his own works in solo performances throughout the country. He serves on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts (CIA) and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

Miller is a Conn/Selmer and a Denis Wick clinician and has two CDs, entitled From Coast to Coast and Delays, Delays; on All Barks Dog records.

Canadian-American saxophonist Jan Berry Baker has performed as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician on many of the world’s great stages.  Recent engagements include performances across the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, France, Germany, Scotland, England, Ukraine, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic. She has been featured as a concerto soloist with orchestras in Canada, Ukraine, USA, and most recently with the Sinfonica de Oaxaca in Mexico.

An advocate of contemporary music, Jan is Co-Artistic Director and saxophonist with Atlanta-based new music ensemble Bent Frequency. Founded in 2003, Bent Frequency brings the avant-garde to life through adventurous and socially conscious programming, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and community engagement. Committed to exploding marginalized programming in classical music, one of BF’s primary goals is championing music by women, composers of color and LGBTQIA+. In the last few years, she and Co-Artistic Director and percussionist Stuart Gerber have formed the Bent Frequency Duo Project. Together, they have commissioned over 50 new works for saxophone and percussion and have given countless performances of these works across the USA, Mexico, and Europe including their Carnegie Hall debut in 2016. Their work to fund the creation, performance and recording of new music has been supported by numerous national and international grants such as the Copland Foundation, French American Cultural Exchange (FACE), Barlow Foundation, Amphion Foundation, Ditson Foundation, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (National Endowment for the Arts/Andrew Mellon Foundation), and Culture Ireland to name a few.

Jan regularly performs with orchestras such as the LA Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Grant Park Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Atlanta Opera and Atlanta Ballet and has appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Joffrey Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Chicago Chamber Players, and American Ballet Theater. She can be heard on American Orchestral Works with Grant Park Orchestra (Cedille), The Golden Ticket with the Atlanta Opera (Albany), The BF Duo Project recording Diamorpha (Centaur), Citizens of Nowhere featuring works for clarinet and saxophone (Albany) and is a featured performer on John Liberatore’s Line Drawings (Albany) and Robert Scott Thompson’s Folio, Vol.1, Vol. 2 and Solace (Aucourant).

As an artist and educator, Jan has held residencies at the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP), Nürnberg Tage Aktueller Musik, Sam Houston State New Music Festival (TX), Charlotte New Music Festival, University of Georgia, New Music on the Point (VT) and Dakota Chamber Music Festival. She is highly sought after as a masterclass teacher and speaker, and has given presentations on contemporary music, entrepreneurship, nonprofits and grant writing, community engagement, socially conscious programming, career development and mentoring at major schools of music across the country.

Dr. Baker is Professor of Saxophone and Woodwind Area Head at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA and currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Department of Music and Special Assistant to the Dean for Faculty Mentoring. Prior academic appointments include Georgia State University, Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, Northwestern University and University of Alberta.  She studied with Frederick L. Hemke, William H. Street and Barbara Lorenz and earned a Doctor of Music degree in saxophone performance from Northwestern University. She is a founding member of the Committee on Gender Equity in the North American Saxophone Alliance and served as the inaugural leader of the CGE Mentoring Program.  Jan Berry Baker is a Selmer Paris, Vandoren, and Key Leaves performing artist.

Clayton Cameron is known as a dynamic drummer who has also experimented with and perfected the art of brush technique. Cameron has toured with Sammy Davis Jr. and Tony Bennett, as well as other legends of the jazz world including George Shearing, Joe Pass, and Joe Williams. During Cameron’s time with Tony Bennett the group performed with many great artists including Frank Sinatra, Billie Joel, Sting, Mariah Carey, Brandy, the Back Street Boys, James Taylor, K.D. Lang, Elvis Costello, and Ricky Martin.

In 1990, after the release of his video, The Living Art of Brushes, Clayton was given the honorary title “Brush Master.”

Born in Los Angeles, California, Cameron received a degree in music from California State University at Northridge. During college, he played in clubs around L.A behind artists such as O.C Smith, Ernie Andrews, Jimmy Weatherspoon, instrumentalist Teddy Edwards, Larry Gails (of Thelonious Monk fame) and Gerald Wilson. After graduating from college, Clayton moved to Las Vegas to perform nightly with a jazz group called the Kirk Stuart trio. While in Las Vegas Cameron experimented with brush techniques. It was during this time that some of the rough ideas for his future videos and books were developed.

In addition to his video, Cameron has created a ground-breaking book on the elusive art of brush playing, entitled Brushworks. You can hear his masterful work on his 2012 CD Here’s to the Messengers: A Tribute to Art Blakey.

B.M., Music, Cal State University, Northridge.

Daniel Gledhill is an accomplished pianist and composer who has worked in the music industry for almost fifteen years, starting with a notable performance with Michael Bolton at the Hollywood Bowl at age 13. Daniel is currently the principal musician for the UCLA School of Music and the staff accompanist for the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. After having worked as the pianist for Los Angeles Opera’s summer outreach program, he served as a staff pianist for the University of Melbourne as well as the prestigious Monash University.

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An award-winning composer, Daniel’s influences span classical and contemporary composers such as Ravel, Prokovief, Nobu Uematsu, and Hans Zimmer.

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Daniel composes for piano, concerts, and orchestral ensembles for film, recently winning the grand prize for his choral work “For the Beauty of the Earth” in the Ensemble Altera Composition Competition. Daniel holds a Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance from Brigham Young University and then continued his studies at the University of Southern California where he earned a certificate in Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program.

Trombonist Alex Iles enjoys a varied and successful career in many musical settings as an active member of the musically diverse Southern California freelance performing and recording community. Alex has established himself as a very in-demand trombonist/low brass performer, recording artist and educator.

Among the varied palette of artists with whom Alex has performed and/or recorded are: Joe Cocker, James Horner, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Alan Jackson, Zubin Mehta, Kid Cudi, The Tonight Show, Sir Neville Marriner, Hans Zimmer, Johnny Mathis, Lalo Shifrin, Natalie Cole, The Who, Meghan Trainor, Jeffrey Kahane, Danny Elfman, Ray Charles, Trevor Rabin, Harry Connick, Jr., Henry Mancini, Josh Grobin, John Zorn, Terence Blanchard, Barbra Streisand, John Williams, Fallout Boy, Thomas Ades, Neil Young, Johnny Mandel, Paul McCartney, and Prince.

Alex has toured as lead and solo jazz trombonist with Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson. He has performed and recorded as a regular member of many of the top big bands and jazz groups in the Los Angeles area including Bob Florence’s Limited Edition, Tom Kubis Big Band and he was an original member of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. He has performed on The Motion Picture Academy Awards, The Emmy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, The People’s Choice Awards and hundreds of television series and motion picture soundtracks including Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rogue One, Frozen, La La Land, Up, The Incredibles, X-Men, Secret Life of Pets, Avatar, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., LOST, and Transformers.

Described as a “modern renaissance man,” (Over the Mountain Journal) Grammy® nominated pianist Aron Kallay‘s playing has been called “exquisite…every sound sounded considered, alive, worthy of our wonder” (LA Times). “Perhaps Los Angeles’ most versatile keyboardist,” (LaOpus) Aron has been praised as possessing “that special blend of intellect, emotion, and overt physicality that makes even the thorniest scores simply leap from the page into the listeners laps.” (KPFK) Aron’s performances often integrate technology, video, and alternate tunings; Fanfare magazine described him as “a multiple threat: a great pianist, brainy tech wizard, and visionary promoter of a new musical practice.”

Aron has performed throughout the United States and abroad and is a fixture on the Los Angeles new-music scene. He is the co-founder and board president of People Inside Electronics (PIE), a concert series dedicated to classical electroacoustic music, the managing director of MicroFest, Los Angeles’ annual festival of microtonal music, and the co-directer of the underground new-music concert series Tuesdays@MONK Space. He is also the co-director of MicroFest Records, whose first release, John Cage: The Ten Thousand Things, was nominated for a Grammy® award for Best Chamber Music Performance. Aron has recorded on MicroFest, Cold Blue, Delos, and Populist records. In addition to his solo work, Aron is currently a member of the Pierrot + percussion ensemble Brightwork newmusic, the Varied Trio, and the Ray-Kallay Duo. He is on the faculty of Pomona College and Chapman University.