- Attended the University of Denver, the University of Colorado and the Manhattan School of Music.
- Graduated from East High School in Denver, Colorado.
- Miles was a had a lengthy career in music education and was a professor of music at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.
- In October 2020, Miles released Rainbow Sign, his debut for Blue Note Records, an album mostly written when his father, Fay Dooney Miles, was near the end of his life.
- Jazz became a more serious preoccupation for Miles at East High School in Denver, where Frisell had preceded him by a dozen years.
- In Denver, where both his parents became federal employees, he picked up his first trumpet during a summer music program; his primary musical influences at the time weren't jazz artists but rather the likes of the Bee Gees and the Jackson 5.
- His fans loved him due to the Talent he had and he even had that charm to make anyone his fan with his first gesture of playing his best instrument for which he has been well known.
- Miles won a classical competition at the International Brass Clinic hosted by Indiana University Bloomington. This enabled him to earn a scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, where he obtained a master's degree.
- Known for his purity of tone, solid chops and melodic improvisations on cornet, Miles cast an aura of unadorned beauty on whatever music he performed, whether leading his own distinctive ensembles, engaging in avant-garde adventures with pianist Myra Melford or contributing his distinct instrumental voice to recordings by the blues singer and multi-instrumentalist Otis Taylor.
- Miles was married to Kari until his death. Together, they had two children: Justice and Honor.
- Miles received a Grammy nomination for his work on Berkeley native Joshua Redman's "Still Dreaming" from 2018.
- He was among Denver's most prominent jazz musicians.
- He released his first album, "Distance for Safety," in 1987. He would go on to record 11 more solo albums, the last of which was 2020's "Rainbow Sign." That outing marked his debut on the Blue Note label and was reportedly written in tribute to his father, Fay Dooney Miles, who had died in 2018. The record featured an all-star quintet with guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist Jason Moran, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Brian Blade.
- The acclaimed cornetist/composer/bandleader will be remembered fondly for such albums as 2002's "Heaven," 2012's "Quiver" and 2017's "I Am a Man.".
- After graduating, Miles initially studied electrical engineering at the University of Denver. However, he eventually switched his major to music and transferred to the University of Colorado Boulder, where he first met Fred Hess.
- Miles' rooted presence in Denver, far from the jazz industry's nerve center in New York, surely had some slowing effect on his solo career, compounding his aversion to self-promotion. But over the last 20 years, and especially within the last decade, he achieved an unmistakable prominence.
- Among his collaborators, including Moran and guitarist Mary Halvorson, Miles had a reputation for steadfastness. "His sound is so pretty that it's easy to forget how much strength is in it," observes Frisell in Michelle Mercer's liner notes for I Am a Man. "There's just this incredible power and clarity in what he does. It's coming from the inside, from the center of where everything comes from. When I play with him it's really easy to just grab a hold of his sound, or lean on it - and because it can be flexible, I can even move through it.".
- Miles had been planning to appear at the 2022 Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn. later this month, until his health issues led him to cancel.
- He was the co-ordinator of Jazz Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
- He moved to Denver at age 11, in part because his parents suspected the mountain climate would help soothe his asthma.
- Survived by his wife, Kari, one daughter, Justice one son Honor, a brother, Jonathan, sisters, Shari Miles-Cohen, and Kelly West and half-sister, Vicki M. Brown.
- Inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2017.
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