Jamie Muir

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This article is about the British percussionist. For the Nova Scotian Minister of Education and politician, see Jamie Muir (politician).

Jamie Muir is a percussionist.

Early in his career, Muir was active in free improvisation, recording and performing with Derek Bailey and Evan Parker in the Music Improvisation Company from 1968-71. During this period he also played in the band Boris with Don Weller and Jimmy Roche (both later of jazz-rock band Major Surgery) and Assegai with Alan Gowen and others.

He is probably best-known, however, for his membership in King Crimson from mid-1972 to early 1973. Muir appeared on a single King Crimson album, 1973's Larks' Tongues In Aspic; several live recordings featuring Muir have since appeared. King Crimson violinist/keyboardist David Cross reports that "We all learned an incredible amount from Jamie. He really was a catalyst of this band in the beginning and he opened up new areas for Bill (Bruford) to look into as well as affecting the rest of us." [1]

With King Crimson, Muir occasionally played a standard drum kit, but more often, "his primary role seems to have been to provide dynamism with his animated stage presence and to gloss the music with an assortment of unusual sounds from a wide variety of percussion instruments, chimes, bells, thumb piano, mbiras, a musical saw, shakers, rattles, and miscellaneous drums;" he also used various found objects as part of his percussion set-up.

After sustaining an on-stage injury, Muir left King Crimson in 1973 to live in a monastery in Scotland.

In 1980, Muir returned to the London music scene to record with Evan Parker and Derek Bailey. He has since withdrawn completely from the music business and now devotes his energies to painting. [2]