Miles Belvin, Trumpet & Flugelhorn Player, is a freelance musician, educator, arranger, and composer in the Dallas Fort-Worth area. Miles was a featured soloist while on tour with the Crossmen Drum and Bugle Corps in 2011 and has gone on to perform in numerous bands and ensembles both as a leader and as a sideman. His arrangements and compositions can be heard in various cover bands and with his two personal bands, Ultrahang and The Miles Belvin Quartet.
Beginning his musical journey at the age of five, Miles was introduced to the world of top 40’s music through his father, a part-time trumpet player in a popular cover band. His father would take him on stage and let him “sit-in” with the band as a part of the show when not playing private clubs and parties. He quickly fell in love with bands like Tower of Power, Earth Wind & Fire, Chicago, Kool & the Gang, and Sly & the Family Stone and dreamed of playing in one of those bands someday.
The first step to making his childhood dream a reality was realized when he entered the seventh-grade band program at Hurst Jr. High. During his first two years at Hurst Jr. High, he won several awards, and during his ninth-grade year, he was featured as a soloist in the top ensemble. Miles would go on to play in the L.D. Bell High School Blue Raider Band, earning top ratings in UIL, Bands of America, and countless solo and ensemble contests.
After graduating from High School, Miles toured across the nation with the Crossmen Drum and Bugle Corp where he networked with hundreds of musicians around his age, fuelling his passion for music further than it had ever gone before. Upon returning from tour, Miles changed his major from Engineering to Music Performance and transferred to Tarrant County College to raise his grade point average and allow for more time to practice while saving money.
In the Fall of 2013 Dr. Philippe Baugh, professor of Jazz Studies at Tarrant County College North East Campus, took note of Miles’ passion for music and offered him a position as a supplemental instructor. For the next two years, he helped Dr. Baugh grow the program, co-writing two books on jazz improvisation for the Jazz specific courses being taught there as well as running sectionals, helping teach classes, and holding open study and jam sessions until the end of the Spring semester in 2015 when he transferred to the University of Texas at Arlington.
Miles is currently a full-time student at UT Arlington and is performing and touring as the solo trumpet chair with the UTA Jazz Orchestra. In the past two years, Miles has won the Daniel Burkholder, Adonis Rose, and Bill Snodgrass Scholarship Awards for his solo abilities while attending UT Arlington and is expected to graduate in 2018 where he looks forward to his next big musical adventure.