The Greenwich was a popular jazz club in the Walnut Hills section of Cincinnati for many years. It closed in 2019, but 26-year-old trumpeter Myles Ellington Twitty remembers going there several times with his father, trombonist/educator Terry Twitty.
“The first time I went there with my dad, we heard the William Mennefield piano trio. When I heard them play live, I said to myself, ‘I don’t know what they’re doing, but I want to do that.’ One of my earliest mentors, after my dad, was a trumpet player named Mike Wade. I remember seeing him play there a handful of times. He was really a big influence on my sound. He really ushered me onto the scene.”
Twitty is currently earning his Jazz Studies Master of Music in Performance degree at Montclair State University’s John J. Cali School of Music. He received his Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies from the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music in 2022, the same year he and other CCM jazz studies students were invited to participate in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jack Rudin Jazz Championship. The CCM Hard Bop Combo performed in JALC’s Rose Hall. CCM Associate Professor of Music Dr. Sergio Pamies arranged three Horace Silver compositions into a medley, and that was one of the tunes the combo performed.
“I had played at Dizzy’s with Jazz House Kids,” Twitty said, “but I’d never done a performance in Rose Hall. It was really a cool experience. I wasn’t super interested in winning. I just wanted to get good feedback.” He did, however, receive an Honorable Mention Trumpet Soloist award. “I went up there and shook Wynton’s hand, and he gave me some really quick feedback, which was really nice.” And, JALC trumpeter Marcus Printup “told me some things he wanted me to work on and invited me to be his teaching assistant at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Summer Jazz Academy.”
Twitty’s decision to pursue his graduate degree at Montclair State was an easy choice. “I’ve been coming out to New Jersey every summer since 2018,” he said. “The Jazz House Kids Summer Workshop is held at MSU, and I’d already developed a lot of relationships out here, and I wanted to make them even stronger. I felt comfortable in the community and felt I had support out here. My initial connection to Jazz House Kids was (trumpeter) Ted Chubb. He and Mike Wade played in a big band together. Mike had been telling me about Jazz House Kids for years. He put me in contact with Ted who helped me with getting out here. So, I owe a lot to Mike Wade and Ted.”
Chubb described Twitty as “an exceptional young man and a great talent on his instrument. What impresses me even more is his passion for education and drive to give back to his community in Cincinnati as well as here in New Jersey. As a young professional, he had already made a sizable impact on his city, even developing his own jazz camp focused around the legendary saxophonist Frank Foster. There are few young musicians I have met that are focused as deeply on sustaining the cultural legacy of this music as Myles is.”
Twitty knew many of the MSU faculty members from his time at JHK. The drummer Alvester Garnett was his combo director. “I also knew (alto saxophonist) Bruce Williams, (tenor saxophonist) Mike Lee, (baritone saxophonist) Jason Marshall, and (trumpeter) Nathan Eklund.”
The Frank B. Foster Summer Jazz Camp in Cincinnati was Twitty’s idea, but the Cincinnati-based nonprofit, JazzAlive!, helped him make it a reality. “I love Cincinnati, and I wanted to give some of the younger players a little bit of a taste of the East Coast,” he said. “I remember my first experience with the Jazz House Kids Summer Workshop. That was my first time coming out here and that really opened my ears to a new way of playing that was possible. My goal was to give as many students in Cincinnati that experience as early as possible.”
The arranger/composer/saxophonist Frank Foster was from Cincinnati but was better known outside his hometown. “I asked Bruce Williams if he ever heard of somebody named Frank Foster, and he said, ‘You talkin’ about Fos?’ He was a huge mentor for Bruce, and hearing the way he talked about him was really exciting. But it was also disheartening to hear how he’s talked about so much more outside of Cincinnati. So, I said, ‘We got to shine a light on him and his legacy.’ There are musicians in Cincinnati who couldn’t tell you anything about Frank Foster other than he played with Count Basie. He should be a hometown hero.”
The first Frank B. Foster Summer Jazz Camp, for high school students, was held this past June, under Twitty’s direction. There were daily combo classes, jazz theory/improvisation classes, and jazz history sessions. The special guest faculty member was Bruce Williams.
Williams has known Twitty “for several years as a student and a rising professional. Myles has developed into a real player and a skilled educator. His playing is rich and fun to listen to. His style is fluid, direct, and steeped in tradition. Myles Twitty is a bright new voice on the jazz trumpet scene.”
According to Laura Gentry, President of Jazz Alive!, Twitty “has the ability to lead, to step forward and manifest ideas until they become reality. He’s really good working with kids. He helps them with their skill sets. He does an amazing job with them.”
Jazz Alive! is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, founded in 2003 by three jazz musicians who were graduates of CCM — saxophonists Gordon Brisker and Joseph Gaudio and clarinetist Donald Carr. Among its activities are a school jazz program, a jazz for seniors program, and the presentation of jazz concerts throughout the Cincinnati area.
In 2019, when Twitty was entering his sophomore year at CCM, Gentry contacted him and asked if he’d like to go to France as a delegate for the Sister City Cincinnati-Nancy Jazz Initiative. “It was myself; another peer of mine (singer-songwriter/keyboardist Jenna Reel); two elders in the community, tenor saxophonist Rick VanMatre and vocalist Kathy Wade; Laura and a translator. We went to Nancy, France, and worked at a couple of schools there with people who were my age. We learned music together, and ended up doing a couple of shows together.”
In June, Twitty released his first album as a leader, Gentle Revolutionary. It contained two of his compositions — the title track and “Shoeshinin’ at the Roseland”, along with well-known selections such as Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage”, Abel Meeropol’s “Strange Fruit”, Jimmy Van Heusen’s “Polka Dots and Moonbeams”, and the African-American spiritual, “Wade in the Water.” The album, he said, “features some of my peers — saxophonist Josh Kline, pianist Dan Karlsberg, bassist Justin Dawson, drummer Philip Tipton, and vocalist Chaya Jones. On one track (‘Gentle Revolutionary’), it features a student of mine, (16-year-old) Cadence Okuwobi, on bass.”
Twitty started playing the trumpet at age six, learning at home from his father. “The first solo I ever learned,” he said, “was ‘Freddie the Freeloader’ from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album. I had it written out, and I would just play along with it every day.”-SANFORD JOSEPHSON
PHOTO BY FRANK YOUNG