Myra Melford's Be Bread. Although it remained unreleased until 2006, Be Bread's debut album, The Image of Your Body (whose title was derived from a Rumi poem), was recorded in 2003, as was Where the Two Worlds Touch by Myra Melford's The Tent, released by Arabesque. Melford relocated to Berkeley, California in 2004 to accept a position as Professor of contemporary improvisational music, University of California Berkeley. In 2006, along with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson, Melford formed Trio M, who released their debut album, The Big Picture, on Cryptogramophone in 2007. It was followed by The Guest House on Enja/Yellowbird in 2012. Melford performs with clarinetist/composer Ben Goldberg, who she met just after she moved to Berkeley, in the duo Dialogue. Melford formed a new quintet, Snowy Egret, featuring bassist Takeishi, guitarist Liberty Ellman, trumpeter Ron Miles, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey in 2012. In October, Melford won the 2012 Alpert Award for "her ascending and expansive trajectory, great, generous musical mind and her ability to take multiple musical traditions into another sphere." Melford released her first solo album in October 2013. Titled Life Carries Me This Way, the album is a collection of work inspired by the paintings of the late visual artist Don Reich. That same year, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow and received both the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Performing Artist Award and a Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts for her efforts to re-imagine the jazz program at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; in November, Snowy Egret performed the music for Melford's multimedia project Language of Dreams, at the center. At Berkeley, Melford has developed and taught a series of courses in contemporary jazz and improvisation-based music for performers and composers in addition to lecturing on innovations in jazz since the 1960s and other topics in contemporary improvised music. Selected honors, fellowships, and awards Guggenheim Fellowship (2013) Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Performing Artist Award (2013) Alpert Award in the Arts for Music (2012) Jazz Journalists Association Pianist of the Year (2008, 2009) Jazz Journalists Association Composer of the Year (2004) Fulbright scholar (2000) New York Foundation for the Arts Composition Fellowship (1998,2002, 2008) Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Commissioning grant (2003) Discography As leader/co-leader An asterisk indicates that the year is that of release. As sidewoman With Joseph Jarman and Leroy Jenkins Out of the Mist