Renowned blues-rock guitarist, multi-platinum selling singer-songwriter, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and 2022 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Steve Miller returns to Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater with the special concert event, The Future of the Blues, on November 10-11 at 8:00 p.m.
With a new and unique repertoire, Mr. Miller continues his exploration of the blues with his perennially popular concerts at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Joining him onstage are Shelly Berg (piano), Craig Handy (tenor saxophone), Sherman Irby (alto saxophone),Mike Rodriguez (trumpet), Courtney Wright (baritone saxophone) Russell Hall (bass), Kenny Lee Lewis (guitar) and Herlin Riley (drums).
For these special performances, Mr. Miller invites Christone “Kingfish” Ingram to join him in Rose Theater, marking the Grammy award-winning, 24-year-old American Blues guitarist and singer’s Jazz at Lincoln Center debut.
“Straight from Clarksdale, Mississippi, home of the Delta Blues Museum, the next great musician on a path that leads from T-Bone Walker to Freddy, B.B., and Albert King to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram is the future of the blues and I’m proud to bring him to the Rose Theater for the very first time,” says Mr. Miller.
Mr. Ingram has been hailed as “one of the most exciting young guitarists in years, with a sound that encompasses B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix and Prince” by Rolling Stone. In the four short years since the release of his self-titled debut album Kingfish, Ingram has taken the music world by storm. From his hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi to stages around the globe the young blues star has already headlined multiple U.S. and European tours, and amazed fans in Australia, New Zealand, and India. American Songwriter exclaimed that “the record is deep with history and feel. It’s no wonder so many have dubbed him ‘next up.’ This album could be his best yet. His most compelling, the most authentic, not only to the genre but to Kingfish, himself.”
For tickets and more information, go to jazz.org/stevemiller.
Steve Miller was a mainstay of the San Francisco music scene that upended American culture in the late ’60s. With albums like Children of the Future, Sailor and Brave New World, Miller perfected a psychedelic blues sound that drew on the deepest sources of American roots music and simultaneously articulated a compelling vision of what music – and, indeed, society – could be in the years to come. Then, beginning in the ’70s, Miller crafted a brand of pure pop that was polished, exciting and irresistible – and that dominated radio in a way that few artists have ever managed. Hit followed hit in what seemed like an endless flow: “The Joker,” “Take The Money and Run,” “Rock’n Me,” “Fly Like an Eagle,” “Jet Airliner” and “Abracadabra” among them. To this day, those songs are instantly recognizable and impossible not to sing along with. Running through Miller’s distinctive catalog is a combination of virtuosity and song craft. His parents were jazz aficionados – not to mention close friends of Les Paul and Mary Ford – so, as a budding guitarist, Miller absorbed valuable lessons from that musical tradition. When the family moved to Texas, Miller deepened his education in the blues with family friend T- Bone Walker. Miller then moved for a time to Chicago, where he played with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells, James Cotton and Paul Butterfield. That range of sources informs his music to this day on his successful tours with the Steve Miller Band.
In the course of his career, Miller has sold tens of millions of records and his music has been streamed several billion times. With each listen the beauty and immediacy of his work, whether at its most playful or most serious, is palpable. As always, whether he was riding the top of the charts or traveling the endless blue highways of American music, you can hear him playing and singing with conviction and precision, passion and eloquence, making music that is at once immediately accessible, thrillingly alive in the present, and more than able to stand the test of time.
As a member of the Board of Directors at Jazz at Lincoln Center, he has curated and headlined a series of shows that explore themes like the bridge from blues to jazz in the music of guitar great T-Bone Walker; the distinctive sounds of the blues triangle of Memphis, Texas and Chicago; the resonances between the singular musical creations of Ma Rainey and Miles Davis; the deep American roots music of Appalachia; Cannonball Adderley and the Blues; and an exploration of how blues music shaped Miller’s own career and musical catalog. In addition, at the request of Wynton Marsalis, he is defining a blues pedagogy for Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2023-24 season focuses on the concept of community; the broader community of jazz; the numerous communities that nurtured its master practitioners across its timeline; the communities of consciousness that influenced these practitioners; the music’s power to bridge divides and coalesce these distinct communities; and the role of jazz – and the arts writ large – in maintaining the human connection in the digital era. Throughout its 2023-24 season, Jazz at Lincoln Center explores these subjects with concerts featuring the forward-thinking composers, virtuosic improvisers, and ingenious conceptualists that populate the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Implicitly or explicitly, season concerts, education programs, advocacy initiatives, and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tours directly evoke themes that illuminate, as Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis puts it, the notion that, “Our music has the exceptional ability to bring people together.”
The organization’s 36th season runs from Sept. 21, 2023 to June 8, 2024 in Rose Theater, The Appel Room, and Dizzy’s Club – all at Frederick P. Rose Hall, the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located on Broadway at 60th Street in New York, NY. In addition to 24 unique live concerts throughout Frederick P. Rose Hall and more than 350 nights of music at Dizzy’s Club, the organization will offer webcast performances via the Jazz Live app, in-person and virtual education programs, and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis tour dates worldwide.
For a complete listing of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2023-24 season concerts, please visit jazz.org/2324season.