Bio
Miranda Ingram Agnew is a trumpet player, composer-improviser, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is deeply invested in building supportive and bold spaces for music-making and lasting connections to others through creative practice.
Growing up in the Sonoran Desert, Miranda pursued music as a way to build meaningful relationships with people in her community, and to approach the world around her with passion and curiosity.
Her work emphasizes collectivity, experimenting with structure and orchestration in order to strongly center the personalities of her collaborators.
Miranda regularly performs across New York City, composing for projects New Web (co-led with saxophonist Katie Webster) and her quartet teeter. She recently participated in a four week residency with Selendis Sebastian Alexander Johnson’s Big Band and performed at Close Up with a band led by Devon Gates. She performed with Naomi Nakanishi’s band at Roulette as part of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M3) 2024 Festival and at Dizzy’s Club as part of a performance curated by Alexa Tarantino and Cecile McLorin Salvant.
As a Winter 2025 MacDowell Fellow in Composition, Miranda co-composed a set of compositions with Katie Webster for their sextet Loomtone, and in November 2024 she released a debut album on Tidebloom Records as a member of ETM, an ensemble featuring double trumpets, voice, bass and drums.
A graduate of the dual degree program between the New England Conservatory and Harvard College, Miranda holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and a Master of Music in Jazz Performance.
She is a 2025 John Stites Jazz Award recipient, a member of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians Cohort 8, and a 2023 Next Jazz Legacy SemiFinalist. She attended the 2017 Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music and was commissioned to perform and record a piece of music for a panel discussion with Terri Lyne Carrington as part of Harvard’s 2021 CompFest.
She has been mentored by and performed with pianist Kris Davis, and has deeply valued the opportunity to study with musicians in various facets of the music scene, including Jason Palmer, Vijay Iyer, Claire Chase, Dominique Eade and Stratis Minakakis.
Miranda has performed and recorded with musicians across the United States and Internationally. She joined bandleader Brittany Karlson, Forbes Graham and Francisco Mela for an improvised performance at Arts at the Armory, and toured Spain in bands lead by bassist David Macchione and guitarist Ella Zirina. She released recordings with collaborators from her hometown of Tucson, AZ, Boston, MA and Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2018, 2019 and 2021 respectively.
As an educator and administrator, Miranda has supported programming for high school students across NYC through Community-Word Project.
She received grant funding to design a free guide for educators centering Women in the Story of Jazz + Creative Music and to curate and facilitate two workshop series for highschool students with guests including Liany Mateo and Naomi Nakanishi.
Miranda continues to draw inspiration from composers including Henry Threadgill and Nicole Michell, and authors including Octavia Butler, who envision and explore futures and worlds through their work. Through her work, she hopes to open space for reflection and exploration.
Download textAwards/Honors
-John Stites Jazz Award (2025)
-Mutual Mentorship for Musicians Cohort 8 (2025-26)
