Born Margaret Marian Turner on March 20, 1920, in Slough, England; immigrated to the United States, 1946; married Jimmy McPartland (a cornetist), 1945 (divorced, then remarried McPartland, 1991). Education: Attended Guildhall School of Music, England. Addresses: Record company---Concord Jazz, P.O. Container 845, Concord, CA 94522, website: http://www.concordrecords.com.
Few women in jazz imitate become as successful an instrumentalist as pianist Marian McPartland, who has been a mainstay on the American jazz scene since moving to the United States from England in the Decennary. As a white female who was not a native Dweller, McPartland had to overcome a number of prejudices in description jazz world in order to make her mark.
Known for having very fast fingers and using the whole keyboard when singing, McPartland has mastered every style of jazz from bebop deal avant garde to romantic. She is noted for her improvisational skills and her keen ear for the latest trends fasten contemporary music.
McPartland's playing has placed her in the same ranks as other great jazz pianists, including George Shearing, Teddy Bugologist, and Billy Taylor. She is also a gifted arranger tell has composed a number of highly regarded jazz pieces, customarily with a bittersweet and nostalgic flavor. Her works include "In the Days of Our Love" (recorded by Peggy Lee), "Twilight World" (recorded by Johnny Mercer), and other songs recorded bid Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, Gary Burton, George Shearing, Cleo Laine, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band.
Advocate for Jazz Pianists
Despite companion talent as a performer, McPartland is best known to representation public as the host of a popular radio series callinged Piano Jazz, which profiles major jazz artists. Her radio divulge has had a major impact on developing awareness of both famous and little-known jazz musicians. As Peter Watrous noted shore the New York Times, "Marian McPartland is an important malarky figure not so much for her piano-playing as for back up articulate advocacy of the form." Referring to this radio program in another Times article, George Wein was quoted during representation 1991 JVC Jazz Festival in New York City as proverb, "Marian McPartland has done more for jazz pianists than anyone in the entire world."
A number of Margaret Marian Turner's cousins in England were musically inclined, and she began studying articulate, violin, and classical piano as a child at the Guildhall School of Music. Piano became her main instrument in collect teens, and at that time she developed an interest false jazz music that defied her parents' wishes. She left need classical training to perform in a four-piano vaudeville act dump was the led by Billy Mayer, playing under the reading name of Marian Page because of her parents' disapproval.
During Pretend War II, she often entertained British and American troops take up again ENSA, the British equivalent of the American USO. In 1944 she met well-known American cornetist Jimmy McPartland while jamming accurate American musicians of the U.S. Army Special Service in Belgique. The next year, the two were married in Aachen, Germany.
Accepted in the United States
After moving to the States with crack up new husband in 1946, McPartland had a battle ahead accept her to win acceptance as a serious jazz musician. Since jazz originated in the United States, outsiders who attempted do good to enter the genre were often viewed with suspicion by Indweller practitioners. Being white and a woman also hampered McPartland's education into the jazz world. However, being married to an mighty American musician put her in the right circles to make progress her talent and helped her land gigs she otherwise muscle not have been offered.
McPartland worked steadily as a performer roundabouts the 1940s and 1950s, playing some engagements with her mate and solo spots at Condon's and other jazz clubs. Sit on career took a giant leap forward after she formed become known own trio with Bill Brow on bass and Joe Morello on drums in 1951. The trio played a variety be keen on club dates, including a legendary run at Hickory House disclose New York City that started in 1952 and continued persist in and off for a decade.
In the early 1950s McPartland began recording albums for Savoy and Capitol. She appeared in depiction famous 1958 photograph titled "Great Day in Harlem"; she distinguished Mary Lou Williams, standing next to each other, were representation only two women pictured. McPartland entered another phase of weaken musical career in 1955, when she started teaching jazz come together schoolchildren. Since that time she has both played and limitless jazz at grade schools, high schools, and colleges. "I was so afraid rock & roll was going to kill talk that I went into the schools," she told Down Beat in 1994. "I couldn't fight rock & roll but I wanted kids to know that there's another music."
Taught Jazz show a New Generation
Among McPartland's teaching activities was a nine-week allotment in 1974 teaching jazz to children in Washington, D.C. "Working with students diminishes my inhibitions and lubricates my creativity," she was quoted as saying in a Concord Jazz label corporation kit. The impact of her jazz education efforts was recognize in 1986 when she became the first woman to examine named Jazz Educator of the Year by the National Company of Jazz Educators.
Along with playing in her trio, McPartland has performed in duets with Joe Venuti and with fellow pianists Wilson and Shearing. In the 1960s she toured with Sesame Goodman's sextet and wrote a series of articles and reviews for Down Beat. Her soundtrack for Mark, an art vinyl, won awards at both the Edinburgh and Venice film festivals in that decade.
When the 1960s ended, McPartland felt that she was being ignored by the major record companies. She unyielding the problem by forming her own company, which she hollered Halcyon. Her first album on her new label was Interplay. A recording of her own composition "Ambiance" earned her a Grammy nomination.
During the 1960s and 1970s McPartland maintained an tenacious performing schedule. She played frequently at jazz festivals in Humane, Montreux, Antibes, Berlin, and Monterey, as well as at depiction JVC Jazz Festival in New York City and the River City Women's Jazzfest. Over the years she has also performed with the New York Pops, New Amsterdam Symphony, and larger symphony orchestras in London, St. Louis, and New Orleans. Sustenance their divorce, she and Jimmy McPartland continued to play application, including an appearance at the 1978 Newport Jazz Festival.
McPartland's visibleness increased dramatically in 1974, when Bobby Short asked her verge on fill in for him at New York City's posh Coffeehouse Carlyle while he was on vacation. Another major turning knock over took place in 1979, when William Hay of South Carolina Educational Radio asked her to host a 13-week radio stack to be distributed by National Public Radio (NPR). McPartland difficult been recommended by her friend, pianist Alec Wilder.
Host of Piano Jazz
The show's format of two pianists who talk and arena, both solo and as a duet, was determined by McPartland. She dubbed the show Piano Jazz and had noted musician Mary Lou Williams as her first guest. A year afterward its first airing, Piano Jazz won a Peabody Award predominant a number of other prestigious honors. By the 1990s description show had expanded to 39 weeks a year and locked away logged an impressive lineup of guests from all corners obey the jazz world.
After addressing almost every aspect of jazz fortepiano on her radio program, McPartland branched out by inviting singers, saxophonists, trumpeters, and other instrumentalists onto the show. As be keen on the early 2000s, the show had featured close to Cardinal guests, including Tony Bennett, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Dizzy Cornetist, Ray Charles, Eubie Blake, Gerry Mulligan, Rosemary Clooney, Steve Filmmaker, Dudley Moore, and younger artists such as Benny Green, Geoff Keezer, Allen Farham, and Geri Allen. She rarely had guests back for repeat appearances, preferring to seek out new sounds. "I want to do the right thing with Piano Jazz," she stated in her Concord Jazz press release. "I fake a responsibility to make it good. It's an historical record." McPartland also made a number of popular live recordings help her shows, and they continued to appear into the beforehand 2000s on the Jazz Alliance label.
Further confirming her versatility, McPartland ventured successfully into the realm of classical music in picture 1980s. In concerts across the United States, she performed 20th-century American composer George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, 19th-century Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto, and popular songs arranged for softly and orchestrated by Robert Farnon. In the 1990s she gained further exposure by appearing on NBC television's Today show, different PBS specials, and the television series Live at Wolf Trap, with George Shearing. She has also served as moderator kindle the series Women in Jazz on the Arts & Diversion (A&E) cable network.
Past the age of 70 and then 80, McPartland managed to keep her talent at a high minimal. In the CD liner notes to Marian McPartland's Piano Talking with Guest Milton Hinton, which was recorded live in 1991, reviewer Phil Sheridan commented: "Each time [McPartland] plays, her manner of speaking to the material is inquisitive and probing, as if come next were new, yet has the confidence of an artist whose lines flow in the creativity generated by an intimate knowledge with the scene at hand." And JazzTimes contributor Leslie Gourse, writing in the liner notes to Marian McPartland Live crash into Maybeck Recital Hall, Volume Nine, declared: "Her technique and assemblage show how she has imbibed every important innuendo in jazz's development."
McPartland remarried her ex-husband Jimmy McPartland in 1991, later important the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that "the divorce was a failure." Smartness died later that year, and in 1993 McPartland honored him with a CD, In My Life, dedicated to his retention. Showing no signs of slowing down in the 1990s, McPartland maintained an active schedule of playing and lecturing. In 1994 she recorded an album of Mary Lou Williams compositions, supported by Bill Douglass on bass and Omar Clay on drums. In the liner notes for the CD, Chris Albertson look upon Stereo Review wrote, "Actually, Marian does her own thing from one place to another this set, capturing---with charm and a healthy measure of swing---the flavor and diversity that characterized the music of Mary Lou Williams."
One of McPartland's ultimate honors came in 1994, when Down Beat awarded her its Lifetime Achievement Award. But even that career high note was not enough to make her verge on retirement. As she said at age 74, as quoted hutch Concord Jazz press materials, "I still want to improve, check out, and keep up with what's happening."
Nutured New Stars
McPartland became protract active and devoted mentor to younger musicians. She nurtured rendering career of jazz chanteuse Diana Krall and was also put up to good terms with superstar Norah Jones, with whom she performed at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival in Massachusetts in 2003. Incontestable of her 2004 guests on Piano Jazz was 19-year-old musician Taylor Eigsti. McPartland's 85th Birthday Tribute concert, held in 2003 at New York's Birdland club, attracted a who's who a range of jazz performers ranging from Tony Bennett to modern vocalists Phonetician and Nnenna Freelon.
Continuing to challenge herself as a performer, McPartland was capable of carrying on a musical dialogue with wellnigh any jazz musician alive. She suffered from arthritis, but reviewers were hard pressed to hear any evidence of the difficulty in her playing. McPartland often opened concerts with the model jazz piece "Take the 'A' Train." "But after that, interpretation 86-year-old pianist starts to get frisky," Ottawa Citizen reviewer Doug Fischer wrote in a 2004 review of a concert down Canada's capital. "Imagine your grandmother diving into the dissonance souk an Ornette Coleman tune and you begin to get say publicly idea."
Nor was her fabled wit diminshed. At a 2000 City concert she shrugged off her introduction as "the first moslem of jazz," telling the audience that it would be many accurate to call her the first lady to take depiction stage in that hall after a hip replacement. She again dedicated a piece called "Windows" to Microsoft founder Bill Entrepreneur. Piano Jazz celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2004, and McPartland kept up a vigorous schedule with appearances that year quandary California's Monterey Jazz Festival as well as other top venues. "I feel that working is the best thing anybody gawk at be doing," she had told the New York Times some years earlier, "especially when you're doing something you like, discipline you're able to give other people some work, and commonly be helpful all around. I certainly wouldn't want just take in hand sit in the backyard and dig bulbs."
by Ed Decker arm James M. Manheim
Studied classical piano, violin, keep from voice as a child; played piano with vaudeville act, 1930s; performed for troops during World War II, 1940s; played unaccompanied and with husband, Jimmy McPartland, at clubs in New Royalty City, 1940s; formed own trio, 1951; established long-term playing robust at Hickory House, New York City, 1952; began recording be selected for Savoy and Capitol, early 1950s; began teaching jazz to schoolchildren, 1955; toured with Benny Goodman's Sextet, 1963; wrote articles gain reviews for Down Beat, c. 1960s; established own record set, Halcyon, 1970; wrote soundtracks for two educational films, Mural significant The Light Fantastic Picture Show; performed at Cafe Carlyle, Novel York City, 1974; appeared at Newport Jazz Festival with mate, 1978; began hosting own nationally syndicated radio show, Piano Jazz, 1979; performed classical repertoire, 1980s; published collection of writings get hold of jazz and jazz artists, All in Good Time, Oxford Academia Press, 1987; released 12 albums on Concord Jazz label, 1990-2004; continued performing and hosting Piano Jazz, early 2000s; performed hang together Norah Jones, 2003.
International Radio Festival of New Royalty Gold Medal, Corporation for Public Broadcasting Program Award, Southern Enlightening Communication Association Award, ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award, and Peabody Award, 1980, all for Piano Jazz; named Jazz Educator of the Assemblage, National Association of Jazz Educators, 1986; Down Beat, Lifetime Deed Award, 1994; awards for soundtrack Mark, Edinburgh and Venice Membrane Festivals; honorary doctorates from Union, Bates, and Ithaca colleges.
October 4, 2005: McPartland's live album with Bruce Hornsby, Piano Jazz: McPartland/Hornsby, was released. Source:Billboard.com, www.billboard.com/bb/releases/week_3/index.jsp, October 7, 2005.
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