SEO

December 12, 2008

Marian McPartland: In A Mist [1974]

In a Mist McPartland Marian 1974

[thanks to boberwig on dailymotion]

Pianist Marian McPartland plays a tune composed by Bix Beiderbecke. He recorded "In the Mist" in 1927.
Margaret Marian Turner was born in England on March 21, 1918 near Slough, Buckinghamshire. As a child, young Marian Turner approached the piano around the age of three. While gaining proficiency on her own, she often provided musical entertainment at family gatherings. Her parents, however, enrolled Marian in violin lessons. Marian's enrollment in a boarding school ended her doomed attempt at playing the violin, and she eventually ended up at the famous London Guildhall School of Music where she studied piano and composition.
Marian was introduced to jazz by a boyfriend who often brought jazz records to her house. For hours they would listen to the music of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and others. From that point on, Marian was hooked on jazz. In 1943, Marian began playing in USO camp shows in Belgium and France, where she met a Chicago cornetist named Jimmy McPartland, a Bix Beiderbeck protege. In 1952, Marian's trio began what was to become a long-running gig at New York's Hickory House, where many legendary musicians to whom Marian had once listened often sat in the audience listening to Marian.
In 1978, Marian began hosting her own radio program for National Public Radio and South Carolina Educational Radio: Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. Marian's most recently released CD on the Concord Jazz label is Just Friends, featuring jazz greats-- Tommy Flanagan, Renee Rosnes, George Shearing, Geri Allen, Dave Brubeck, and Gene Harris--playing duets with Marian. Additionally, a CD titled Portraits was released on the NPR label in the summer of 1999. This CD, as suggested by the title, is a compendium of Marian's musical portraits of several guests on Piano Jazz.