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Marian McPartland

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Marian McPartland

Margaret Marian McPartland (née Turner;[1] born March 21, 1922) (some sources give March 20, 1920), is an English Jazz pianist, composer, writer, and the host of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on National Public Radio.

Early life

Marian McPartland was a musical prodigy from the time she could sit at the piano, about the age of three. Marian studied classical music, and the violin, in addition to the piano.

Career

Jazz pianist Marian McPartland at the Village Jazz Lounge in Walt Disney World (photo by Laura Kolb)

She pursued classical studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Much to the dismay of her family, she developed a love for American jazz and musicians such as Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, Mary Lou Williams, and many others. In 1938, despite her family's efforts to keep her at Guildhall, Marian left to join Billy Mayerl's Claviers, a four-piano vaudeville act, performing under the stage name Marian Page. The group toured throughout Europe during World War II, entertaining Allied troops.

While touring with USO shows in Belgium, she met and began performing with Chicago cornetist Jimmy McPartland in 1944. The two were soon married, and played at their own wedding on a military base in Germany.

After the war, the couple moved to Chicago to be near Jimmy's family. Then, in 1949, they moved to Manhattan where they lived in an apartment in the same building as the Nordstrom Sisters. With Jimmy's help and encouragement, Marian started her own trio and began a long residency at the famous New York City jazz nightclub, the Hickory House, from 1952-1960, where she worked with drummer Joe Morello until his departure to join Dave Brubeck's Quartet.

After many years of recording for labels like Capitol, Savoy, Argo, Sesac, Time, and Dot, she began her own record label, Halcyon Records in 1969, before beginning her long association with the Concord Jazz label.

Radio career

Marian McPartland interviews Ramsey Lewis on her radio show, Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz in 2009.

In 1964, Marian McPartland launched a new venture on WBAI-FM (New York City), conducting a weekly radio program that featured recordings and interviews with guests. Pacifica Radio's West Coast stations also carried this series, which paved the way for Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, a National Public Radio series that began on June 4, 1978 and is currently the longest-running cultural program on NPR and the longest-running jazz program ever produced on public radio.

Several programs in the new series, which features McPartland at the keyboard with guest performers (usually pianists), have been released on CD by the Concord Records label. McPartland celebrated the 25th anniversary of the NPR series with a live taping at the Kennedy Center for which Peter Cincotti was the guest.

Awards and compositions

Marian was awarded a Grammy in 2004, a Trustees' Lifetime Achievement Award for her work as an educator, writer and host of NPR Radio's long-running "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz". Although a master at adapting to her guest's musical styles and having a well-known affinity for beautiful and harmonically-rich ballads, she has also recorded many tunes of her own. Her compositions include "Ambiance", "There'll Be Other Times", "With You In Mind", "Twilight World", and "In the Days of Our Love".

Just before her 85th birthday, she composed and performed a symphonic piece, "A Portrait of Rachel Carson" to mark the centennial of the environmental pioneer.[2]

Musical Style

McPartland's encyclopedic knowledge of jazz standards, highly musical ear, involvement in over 60 years of evolving jazz styles and rich experience blending with radio guests [3] has led to a musical style that has been described as: "flexible and complex, and almost impossible to pigeonhole" [4]. She is known as a harmonically and rhythmically complex and inventive improviser: "She was never content to be in one place, and always kept improving. She has great ears and great harmonics. Because of her ear, she can go into two or three different keys in a tune and shift with no problem."[5]

She is a synesthete, associating different musical keys with colors, stating that: "The key of D is daffodil yellow, B major is maroon, and B flat is blue" [6].

Awards

Honorary degrees

Other awards

Notes

  1. ^ Hasson, Claire Marian McPartland: Jazz Pianist: An Overview of a Career. PhD Thesis. Retrieved on 2008-08-12.
  2. ^ Day, Jeffrey (2007-11-13). Jazz great McPartland to unveil symphonic piece on Rachel Carson. [popmatters.com]. Retrieved on 2009-04-26.
  3. ^ Hasson, Claire. A Discussion Of Marian McPartland's Style in Marian McPartland: Jazz Pianist: An Overview of a Career
  4. ^ MacFadyen, J. Tevere (1985) Liner notes to Marian McPartland: Willow Creek And Other Ballads, Concord Jazz Inc.
  5. ^ Zych, D. (1997) 'Marian McPartland: True Devotion', JazzTimes, vol. 27, no. 8, October, pp. 31-37.
  6. ^ Balliett, W. (1977) New York Notes: A Journal Of Jazz In The Seventies, New York: Da Capo Press Inc. p. 289.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marian_McPartland&oldid=324668879"