Mark Miller

Mark David Miller, writer, photographer (born 6 November 1951 in Toronto, ON). Mark Miller is one of Canada’s most respected jazz critics.

Miller graduated with a BFA from York University in 1973. He was a subject editor 1976–79 of the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada and an associate editor 1988–91 of the second, in each case responsible for the jazz and English Canadian pop music content. As a freelance journalist, he served as the jazz critic for The Globe and Mail from 1978 to 2005, and has contributed to Canadian Composer, Coda, Down Beat, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Jazz Forum and Saturday Night.

Miller’s interests as an author have included the history and personalities of jazz in Canada, and the legends and forgotten figures of jazz internationally. The collection A Certain Respect for Tradition: Selected Writings 1980–2005, was drawn largely from his work for The Globe and Mail. His photographs of musicians have appeared in many Canadian, US and European publications.

A version of this entry originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.

Writings

Jazz in Canada: Fourteen Lives (Toronto, 1982).

Boogie, Pete & The Senator: Canadian Musicians in Jazz, The Eighties (Toronto, 1987).

Cool Blues: Charlie Parker in Canada 1953 (London, ON, 1989).

Such Melodious Racket: The Lost History of Jazz in Canada, 1914–1949 (Toronto, 1997).

The Miller Companion to Jazz in Canada and Canadians in Jazz (Toronto, 2001).

Some Hustling This! — Taking Jazz to the World, 1914–1929 (Toronto, 2005).

A Certain Respect for Tradition: Selected Writings 1980–2005 (Toronto, 2006).

High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm: The Life and Music of Valaida Snow (Toronto, 2007).

Herbie Nichols: A Jazzist’s Life (Toronto, 2009).

Way Down That Lonesome Road: Lonnie Johnson in Toronto, 1965–1970 (Toronto, 2011).