Marilyn Crispell
“Of course the ear is of primary importance in playing music, but that doesn’t mean it’s not related to the intellect! When you play, everything is involved – the ear, the intellect, the emotions – you can’t separate them like they’re in little boxes – they’re all part of a greater whole.”
"Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano,” wrote Jon Pareles in the New York Times. “She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." Crispell, who was born in Philadelphia in 1947, is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where she studied classical piano and composition, and has been a resident of Woodstock, New York since 1977, when she came to study and teach at the Creative Music Studio.
Crispell discovered jazz through the music of [...]
“Of course the ear is of primary importance in playing music, but that doesn’t mean it’s not related to the intellect! When you play, everything is involved – the ear, the intellect, the emotions – you can’t separate them like they’re in little boxes – they’re all part of a greater whole.”
"Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano,” wrote Jon Pareles in the New York Times. “She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." Crispell, who was born in Philadelphia in 1947, is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where she studied classical piano and composition, and has been a resident of Woodstock, New York since 1977, when she came to study and teach at the Creative Music Studio.
Crispell discovered jazz through the music of John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor among others. For ten years she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble and has been a member of the Barry Guy New Orchestra and guest with his London Jazz Composers Orchestra, as well as a member of the Henry Grimes Trio, Quartet Noir and Anders Jormin's Bortom Quintet. Crispell has described how, through playing with the Braxton Quartet, she “began to think more compositionally and pay more attention to space and silence”. Besides working as a soloist and leader of her own groups, Crispell has performed and recorded extensively with well-known players on the American and international jazz scene. She's also performed and recorded music by many contemporary composers.
The pianist’s poll-topping ECM debut, recorded in 1996, was Nothing Ever Was, Anyway, a double album dedicated to the music of Annette Peacock on which Crispell was partnered by Paul Motian (drums) and Gary Peacock (bass). By the time her next trio recording, Amaryllis, was released, Adam Shatz was able to hail her in the New York Times for making “two of the most beautiful piano trio records in recent memory”. A further trio disc, Storyteller, has been followed by a solo album, Vignettes, and duets with clarinettist David Rothenberg, One Dark Night I Left my Silent House (“one of the calmest, loveliest duo albums to come out on ECM”, Popmatters), and bassist Gary Peacock on Azure (“starkly beautiful, with the sort of contemplative glow that only maturity seems to provide”, New York Times).
In addition to playing, Marilyn Crispell has taught improvisation workshops and given lecture/demonstrations at universities and art centres in many parts of the world and has collaborated with videographers, filmmakers, dancers and poets. Crispell has been the recipient of many awards, including three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship grants, a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1996 she was given an Outstanding Alumni Award by the New England Conservatory.
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