Michael is leaving for Paris, drawn by love, and vowing to return, in 2016, married, we sincerely hope, to the lovely Siham!  He’s unquestionably the best young bebop piano player on the local scene, having climbed quickly to that level over the past decade since arriving here from the Central Valley town of Lodi.  There, he’d been a prodigy, starting at age seven on the piano and gaining technique — a looseness in the wrists that’s since been key to navigating the bebop tempos and changes and a practice regimen — acquired particularly around age 12 or so under the tutelage of teacher Frank Wiens, particularly focused on the Russian school around Rachmaninoff et al.

Michael’s grandfather, Charlie Milosevich, led his own big band in the 1940s, and was gigging as a solo stride player around Central Valley towns when Michael was a youth — though it was almost an undercover kind of thing, not really mentioned at home.  Michael says he stumbled on his grandfather playing in a bar or club one night in some dusty town, and the facts of his grandfather’s late career have emerged piecemeal over the years. For Michael, competitions and a stint at Stockton’s University of the Pacific studying composition followed.  He hit San Francisco in 2003 and fell in with local bebop players who today are among the top rank on the scene.  Serious time with West African musician Bongo Sidibe gave him more to chew on as he developed his bebop vocabulary with a ferocity that has never subsided.  The local scene will be impoverished all the while he’s gone — even as serious contenders emerge, as they will.  You’ll hear them here, we’re sure!  We ain’t ones to mope, tho’ we’ll miss him!

Michael has played at Bird & Beckett for nearly a decade, largely with bop master musician Don Prell, while also being deeply immersed in gigs at Cafe Revolution as a third of the Marcus Shelby Trio, at the Club Deluxe and at the Sheba Lounge, plus any number of other venues.

LIVE RECORDING TONIGHT of a quintet that absolutely killed when they played jazz club last month! Until Michael’s return, Terrance Tony, a fantastic alto player recently relocated from Houston, will take over the fourth Saturday bookings!  Michael and Terrance will be joined,on this date, as they were last month, by Vinnie Rodriguez on drums, Ollie Dudek on bass and Downtown Danny Brown on tenor.  A date to revel in!  Come down and help us give Michael a grand send-off.