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Marilyn Crispell

Marilyn Crispell 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. She discovered jazz through the music of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and other contemporary jazz players and composers. 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 (with Urs Leimgruber, Fritz Hauser and Joelle Leandre), and Anders Jormin's Bortom Quintet. In 2005 she performed and recorded with the NOW Orchestra in Vancouver, Canada and in 2006 she was co-director of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute and a faculty member at the Banff Centre International Workshop in Jazz. In 2014 she led a three-week music residency at the Atlantic Center For the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida, and in 2016 led a one-week residency at the Conservatory Manuel de Falla in Buenos Aires. In 2019 she will be a guiding artist at the Jazzdanmark Summer Session in Denmark. Currently she is touring and recording with two different trios: Joe Lovano's Trio Tapestry (with Carmen Castaldi) and a trio with Harvey Sorgen and Joe Fonda, as well as collaborating with Angelica Sanchez, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Gunhild Seim, Tyshawn Sorey, David Rothenberg and others.

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 contemporary composers Robert Cogan, Pozzi Escot, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Manfred Niehaus and Anthony Davis (including four performances of his opera "X" with the New York City Opera).

In addition to playing, she has taught improvisation workshops and given lecture/demonstrations at universities and art centers in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and has collaborated with videographers, filmmakers, dancers and poets.

Crispell has been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship grants (1988-1989, 1994-1995 and 2006-2007), a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission (1988-1989), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005-2006). In 1996 she was given an Outstanding Alumni Award by the New England Conservatory, and in 2004, was cited as being one of their 100 most outstanding alumni of the past 100 years.

Marilyn Crispell/Harvey Sorgen, The Young Mothers & B.B. King

by Maurice Hogue
December 9, 2024

If you haven't heard the piano trio, Dreamstruck (Marilyn Crispell, Joe Fonda & Harvey Sorgen), put them on your must-listen list. Highly original and free wheeling playing make their two releases much appreciated. Crispell and Sorgen decided to continue making magic as a duo on the new Forest, now available, and it's one of the feature albums in this playlist. There's a preview of an up-coming release by bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten's Young Mothers, as well as debuts from another ...

Album Review

Marilyn Crispell & Harvey Sorgen: Forest

by Mike Jurkovic
November 4, 2024

In whatever stage, studio or musical environment these two supremely gifted improvisors find themselves, their talk is never anything other than bone-set honest. And as clarifying and compelling as so much of the duo's previous decades of recordings have been--preternatural recordings that include Anthony Braxton, Ahmad Jamal, Paul Simon, Cecil Taylor, Karl Berger and Joe Fonda--Forest, the starkly afire state of the union address delivered by 2025 NEA Jazz Master Marilyn Crispell and shifu percussionist Harvey Sorgen could very well be ...

Album Review

Jason Stein / Marilyn Crispell / Damon Smith / Adam Shead: spi-raling horn

Read "spi-raling horn" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 25, 2024

spi-raling horn by these genre-destroying avant-garde jazz artists is a whirlwind journey through the vast landscapes of jazz, where the boundaries between tradition and innovation blur into a kaleidoscope of ultrasonic exploration. This album is not just a collection of tracks, but a sonic crusade led by a quartet of virtuosos who wield their instruments like sorcerers conjuring spells. From the start, listeners are transported into a realm where bass clarinet giant Jason Stein with legendary piano great ...

Album Review

Joe Lovano Trio Tapestry: Our Daily Bread

Read "Our Daily Bread" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
May 18, 2023

Rising from a serene inner place, the music takes shape like prayer. That it is prayer that lies at the beating heart of all eight spacious spirituals that comprise Our Daily Bread, should come as no surprise. Bearing the expressive quietism of his ancestors--John Coltrane, Sonny Stitt, and Ornette Coleman among them--saxophonist Joe Lovano has never hid his leaning towards higher powers. Imagine Trio Tapestry's third deep listening, deeply rewarding ECM release as a house of worship at ...

Album Review

Yuma Uesaka, Marilyn Crispell: Streams

Read "Streams" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
December 13, 2022

La grande ed esperta pianista Marilyn Crispell incontra in questo lavoro il giovane e talentuoso sassofonista e clarinettista di origini giapponesi Yuma Uesaka per dar vita a un album caratterizzato dall'equilibrata alternanza di scrittura e improvvisazione, lirismo e libertà. La Crispell ha lavorato con molti dei più importanti maestri del jazz e dell'improvvisazione—da Anthony Braxton a Gary Peacock e Paul Motian—e ha una particolare predilezione per il lavoro in duo, che mette qui a frutto sul materiale messo ...

Radio & Podcasts

Dreamstruck, Jon Irabagon, Jesse Morrow & Clean Feed Releases

by Maurice Hogue
November 28, 2022

One of the memorable piano trio releases of 2022 should be With Grace In Mind from the trio Dreamstruck. Marilyn Crispell, Joe Fonda & Harvey Sorgen are among the finest at their craft and together they create original music from original ideas. Also on the playlist this week, Jon Irabagon's steamin' quartet, several albums from Italy by pianist Alberto Braida, guitarist Nicolo Francesca Faraglia and vocalist Monica Nica Agosti, three new releases from Clean Feed (Red Desert Orchestra, Marek Pospiezalski, ...

Album Review

Clint Bahr: Puzzlebox

Read "Puzzlebox" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 18, 2022

Puzzlebox is precisely that: A hard-cover box of musical curios arranged around an 11-minute improvisation ("As Tympani Melt in the Greek Heat") performed not by a band but by a rotating caravan of progressive jazz and rock musicians organized by multi-instrumentalist and composer Clint Bahr. Bahr's collaborators in this curious collection include pianist Marilyn Crispell, violinist David Cross, the late Yes guitarist Peter Banks and other musicians who have performed with artists as far-ranging as Sun Ra and Rahsaan Roland ...

Contest

Enter the "Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell - Azure" Giveaway at All About Jazz!

Source: All About Jazz
June 29, 2013

All About Jazz members are invited to enter the ECM Records “Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell - Azure“ giveaway contest starting today. We'll select FIVE winners at the conclusion of the contest on July 29th. Click here to enter the contest

(Becoming a fan of Gary Peacock at AAJ automatically enters you in the contest.)

Good luck! Your Friends at ECM Records About Azure

Azure features beautiful duets by two great improvisers whose compatibility was proven long ago. ...
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209

Interview

Marilyn Crispell Interview

Source: All About Jazz
September 8, 2009

186

Radio

The Jazz Session #52: Marilyn Crispell

Source: All About Jazz
April 10, 2009

138

Performance / Tour

Marilyn Crispell, Saturday, Aug. 19--Maverick Jazz Series Woodstock, NY

Source: Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services
August 10, 2006

Marilyn Crispell, jazz piano, Saturday, Aug. 19, 8 pm

WOODSTOCK, N.Y., August 8 , 2006 -- Maverick's first Jazz Series comes to a close on Saturday, August 19, when piano great (and Woodstock resident) Marilyn Crispell will give a solo performance at 8:00 p.m.

Marilyn Crispell is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. For ten years she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble and has been a member of the ...
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Event

Daniel Abrams and Marilyn Crispell Rehearse For Tristan's Promise

Source: All About Jazz
July 22, 2004

Daniel Abrams and Marilyn Crispell rehearse for the forthcoming production of ABRAMS' new play Tristan's Promise being presented by the Woodstock Guild at the historic Byrdcliffe Barn (part of America's oldest ungoing art's colony) on Friday, August 27 & Saturday, August 28th at 8pm. The play is about the interrelationship of two concert pianists and their manager (played by John Michalski) and the music performed by the two pianists, both separately and together, will range from Mozart to Wagner to ...
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147

Performance / Tour

Lee Konitz, Marilyn Crispell, Geri Allen, Ray Brown, Holly Hofmann...

Source: All About Jazz

BYRONIK.COM - March 9, 2002

Sax man Konitz comes late to the party but brings three women By MICHAEL C. BURGESS BYRONIK.COM — March 9, 2002

The talents of three supremely accomplished female jazz performers: pianists Marilyn Crispell and Geri Allen, and flutist Holly Hofmann, are to be showcased by the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in its Spring 2002 Jazz at The Neurosciences Institute concerts, San Diego, CA.

And, for the first ...
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"Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." —Jon Pareles, N.Y. Times "Ms Crispell has created a rich personal expression that is breathtaking in its originality and visceral energy." —Amy Duncan, Christian Science Monitor "seeing and hearing Crispell play live is a stunning experience.... a passionate motivation that approaches shamanistic spirituality." "labyrinthine structures held together by a deeply personal logic" "one of the most technically brilliant, imaginative and impassioned contemporary musicians now expanding the expressive potential of the piano." —Derk Richardson, The East Bay Express (CA) "Her improvisational approach is so personal, so explosive and so devastating that it makes jazz (and most other music) sound like the archaic language of an ancient people