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On Friday evening, at Lloyd Miller<\/a>\u2018s invitation, my wife and I attended the screening of a new film about his life. \u00a0It was presented at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The film, titled Sufi, Saint, and Swinger<\/em> \u2014 directed by the British-Chinese Camilla French and her Colombian husband, Andr\u00e9s Borda (who was present at the screening), and produced by the British-Iranian Abbas Nokhasteh \u2014 is based on Miller\u2019s memoir of the same name (Sufi, Saint and Swinger: A Jazzman\u2019s Search for Spiritual Manifestations in Many Nations<\/i>). \u00a0It chronicles the extraordinary and extraordinarily troubled life of a man who is, quite clearly, a linguistic and musical prodigy.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lloyd Miller \u2014 Dr.<\/em>\u00a0Lloyd Miller, as a matter of fact, since he earned a Fulbright fellowship and completed a doctoral dissertation on Middle Eastern music \u2014 was incarcerated by his parents as a child in a mental institution that we would today decry as abusive and, later, jailed in a Utah state prison after being convicted of arson (a conviction that he vehemently contests and that, as I understand it, was later overturned). \u00a0Despite such setbacks, he became a multilingual musical virtuoso who is able to play approximately a hundred different instruments and who, for five years in the 1970s and (so far as I\u2019m competent to judge) in accentless Persian, hosted a popular television show on national Iranian television (Kurosh Ali Khan va Dustan<\/em>, or \u201cKurosh Ali Khan and Friends\u201d), under the adopted name of Kurosh Ali Khan. \u00a0(Kurosh<\/em> is the Persian name from which we derive the name Cyrus<\/em>.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As Lloyd retells the story, his parents took him at one point, shortly before his father took a position as a financial advisor to the Shah of Iran, to some sort of child psychologist or psychiatrist who was also a Latter-day Saint bishop. \u00a0While in treatment, under hypnosis, the man told Lloyd that he would travel to a faraway land and become a successful musician, mixing Oriental music with jazz. \u00a0Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Tehran. \u00a0Lloyd\u2019s mother would eventually receive a decoration from the Shah for her book\u00a0Bright Blue Beads: An American Family in Persia<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0<\/span>(He and I must surely be two of the few current Utah residents who ever shook hands with Shah\u00a0Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Anyway \u00a0\u2014 with some possible discussion necessary about the term successful<\/em>, since he\u2019s unfortunately very far from being rich \u00a0and not widely known (he\u2019s a jazz<\/em> musician, after all!)\u00a0\u2014 moving to a faraway land,\u00a0becoming a successful musician, and mixing Oriental music with jazz is precisely what Lloyd did. \u00a0(I note that the German Wikipedia entry about him<\/a> is better and more thorough than its English equivalent; Europeans tend to like jazz more than Americans do.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Now approaching his eightieth birthday (though he doesn\u2019t look or act it), Lloyd Miller is not only an underappreciated genius but a spiritual seeker, a Latter-day Saint, and a gentle soul whom I like very, very much.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here are some links from which, if you\u2019re interested, you can perhaps gain some little idea of his work:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAn Interview With World Musician Lloyd Miller\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLifetime in Oriental Jazz\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLloyd Miller Plots His Musical Evolution\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.jazzscope.com\/OJ.html<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.discogs.com\/artist\/639808-Lloyd-Miller<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span>Music and Song in Persia: The Art of Avaz<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n