The Collective

Joseph Miller is one of the most asked-for trumpet players and educators in Northeast Ohio. His joyful approach and high-energy performances can be heard in all kinds of music, from thumping funk to grooving Salsa and Latin Jazz to R&B to Broadway and straight up Jazz.

Trained in college classrooms, clubs and theaters, Joe can play pretty much anything. He has performed and toured extensively with international, regional, and local artists, and currently holds the principal trumpet chair at Playhouse Square, where he’s played for a Who’s Who of nationally touring Broadway shows, including Wicked, Mean Girls, Book of Mormon, Kinky Boots, West Side Story, Porgy and Bess, and many more.

Joe has also toured internationally with the Grammy-nominated Acid Jazz group, Liquid Soul, and with Grammy winning singer/composer, Bobby Caldwell. Joe has played lead and solo trumpet for Aretha Franklin, La India, Weird All Yankovic, Tony Vega, Tony Bennett, Frankie Valli, Barry Manilow, The Funk Brothers and lots of others. He has also been a featured soloist with school jazz bands throughout northeast Ohio.

Joe’s recording credits are many and varied, including Grammy-nominated recordings with Bassist Doug Johns, the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, the Jack Schantz Jazz Unit, Paul Ferguson’s Jazz Orchestra, Sammy DeLeon, the late Gerald Levert, First Light and many more.

Joe has been a member of the music faculty at Cleveland State University since 2011, specializing in jazz and commercial music, and trumpet faculty at The Music Settlement since 2018. Joe is a proud Cleveland State University alum, grateful student of the great former Cleveland Orchestra Member Charles Couch