Miles Perkin

Beginnings

Born and raised on the Canadian prairies, the imagery of the big sky and wide open landscapes have forever permeated his music. It was here that he experienced a sense of musical freedom and the drive to explore musical possibilities from the very beginning. His father was a teacher, rock and roll guitarist and founder of a kind of school of rock in Brandon, Manitoba.

The music room at the school was a musical playground where he would explore everything from instruments in the fully stocked percussion section, to guitars and amplifiers, to various synths, to a powerful PA system equipped with a full scale mixing console and effects rack. He’d spend years messing around with everything that was available.

At 5 years old, his first instrument was the drums. A few year later, (when his hands were big enough) he started playing guitar and singing in various local choirs.

While he would continue to dabble with other instruments such as the piano and various brass instruments, his main instruments would remain the drums and guitar until the age of 17 when he discovered the upright bass. The massive instrument was the perfect vehicle for combining the strengths of his diverse skill set, and this instrument has been his main focus ever since. 

Career

After studying for one year at Brandon University to take composition lessons with the legendary Bob Brookmeyer, Perkin moved from Manitoba to Montreal in 1999. While earning a bachelors degree in music from McGill University he performed on nearly a nightly basis in Montreal’s vibrant and diverse music scene. He quickly had steady engagements in the house band at various jazz clubs in Montreal, and shared the stage with most of the top jazz and “musique actuelle” musicians in the city. He regularly appeared live and in the studio with acclaimed artists such as Lhasa de Sela, The Barr Brothers, Nicole Lizée, Patrick Watson, Thom Gossage, Jason Sharp, Esmerine, Joe Grass, Chet Doxas, Sarah Pagé, Jorane, Joshua Rager, Steve Raegele, Erik Hove, Philippe Lauzier, Christine Jensen, Joshua Zubot, Francois Bourassa, Pierre-Yves Martel, Jean Derome, Jan Jarczyck, André White and many others. Before leaving Montreal, he recorded 2 albums of his own music in 2008. ::Aposiopesis:: was his debut solo bass and voice album and ::The Guessing Game:: featured music written for Common Thread: a 6 piece ensemble featuring Erik Hove, Chet Doxas, Sarah Pagé, Joe Grass and Thom Gossage.

After a brief stint in New York City studying with bass master Mark Helias and playing around with the Brooklyn and Downtown scene of the time, he settled in Berlin, Germany In 2009 where he completed his masters degree at the Jazz Institut Berlin under the guidance of Greg Cohen. He formed the Miles Perkin Quartet in 2011 with British trumpeter Tom Arthurs, French pianist Benoit Delbecq, and Canadian drummer Thom Gossage. This quartet developed a fine and dream-like aesthetic that can be described as serene yet exciting at the same time. In 2012 the quartet released and toured their acclaimed album ::Objects In Mirror::. Some other projects of the 2010s were associated with Berlin's "Echtzeitmusik" scene and included Sequoia: a double bass quartet that explored and attempted to expand the range of sounds the double bass can produce while navigating scores that were based on imagery of familiar, real-life situations. For example, the title track of their evil rabbit records release ::Rotations:: is based on the experience of walking through a 1970s industrial factory with different rooms full of machines producing various sound fabrics and unsymmetrical polyrhythms. Glue was a collective trio with Yorgos Dimitriadis and Tom Arthurs that explored a wonderfully strange combination of minimalist noise and free jazz energy at extremely low volume levels, mostly at the level after sound is produced, but before notes can fully emerge. Then there was the Berlin based, all Canadian power trio Coal Oven. This band blended song forms with collective improvisation at extremely high volume levels. Their self-produced 2016 release ::All Mountains:: turned into something like if Neil Young and Sonic Youth made a record together. After the tragic passing of the great Jean-Jacques Avenel in 2014, Miles stepped into those enormous shoes in Benoit Delbecq's trio, Delbecq 3  featuring Congolese drummer Emile Biayenda. This intense collaboration of 3 musicians rooted in the musical traditions of 3 different continents continues to be formative.

Miles currently resides in Berlin with his partner and 2 children. He performs regularily with his various projects, produces music, teaches private bass lessons, teaches composition lessons, and offers group workshops on various topics related to his artistic practice.