Born 21 March 1942 in Blackwell, Arkansas, Amina Claudine Myers is a pianist, organist, vocalist, composer, arranger, and educator who became one of the few female members in the first wave of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, blending blues, gospel, and jazz into a unique and deeply personal body of work recognised with the 2024 NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship.
Majoring in music education, Myers played in the jazz band, became student director for the choir, and taught herself to play the organ, learning how to play the blues whilst studying classical piano. After graduation she moved to Chicago in 1963 and joined the AACM in 1966 as one of the performers at the organisation's second concert. In the late 1960s she added "Amina" to her name, and around 1970 began working with Gene Ammons for two and a half years, continuing to work with Sonny Stitt and other luminaries whilst playing weekends in clubs and church on Sundays. Myers moved to New York City in 1976, where she intensified her compositional work and expanded into Off-Broadway productions, and around 1978 began touring in Europe with Lester Bowie's quintet and his New York Organ Ensemble. Her debut album Poems for Piano: The Piano Music of Marion Brown appeared on Sweet Earth in 1979, followed by Song for Mother E with drummer Pheeroan akLaff on Leo in 1980.
Myers has recorded extensively as leader on labels including Leo Records, Black Saint, RCA Novus, Minor Music, and her own Amina C Records, with notable albums including Amina Claudine Myers Salutes Bessie Smith, Jumping in the Sugarbowl, Country Girl, The Circle of Time, Amina, In Touch, Augmented Variations, and 2016's Sama Rou: Songs from My Soul. She has worked and recorded with Muhal Richard Abrams, Lester Bowie, Henry Threadgill, Archie Shepp, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, Von Freeman, Anthony Braxton, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and collaborated with her soul sister Sola Liu combining Chinese and Afro-American music traditions. Inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2001 and Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame in 2010, Myers teaches privately in New York City and in 2024 released Central Park's Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith on Red Hook Records, marking their first collaboration since their early AACM days.
