jazz’s foremost modern practitioner of the cornet, who became a revered and innovative figure while maintaining a career in his longtime home state of Colorado, died March 8 at his home in Denver of complications from polycythemia vera, a rare blood disorder. He was 58. Miles worked for many years with drummer Rudy Royston and guitarist Bill Frisell (both fellow Denverites), forming a) and headlining Manhattan’s Village Vanguard, the first artist to do so upon the storied club’s September 2021 reopening. He was also an educator and the coordinator of the jazz studies program at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
