Corky Hale + Marian McPartland

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com

Corky Hale called yesterday to chat. Most jazz fans know Corky as Los Angeles' first-call harpist in the '50s and '60s. If a harp was needed on pop and jazz recordings, Corky was likely on the session. Her harp appears on many of Ella Fitzgerald's songbook albums as well as recordings by Anita O'Day, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and so many others. Corky also plays a range of woodwind instruments and sang with Harry James, Ray Anthony and a bunch of other bands. And then there are the jazz albums she was on in the '50s with Bud Shank, Chet Baker and Herbie Harper.

But what may come as a surprise to many people is that Corky is first and foremost a fabulous jazz pianist. She accompanied Billie Holiday in 1957 in Las Vegas and at Jazz City in Los Angeles and backed dozens of other singers. These days Corky performs solo on piano and with a trio at Hollywood clubs. I've always wished more jazz fans were familiar with the confident elegance of her chord voicings. [Photo above of Billie Holiday and Corky Hale in 1957 by Ray Avery/CTSImages.com]

As we spoke yesterday, Marian McPartland's name came up. Corky mentioned that back in December 1993, Marian had her on Piano Jazz. I was stunned, since I had never seen a CD or a listing of their get-together in the Piano Jazz series. So Corky sent along an mp3 of the show. I gave it a listen and was just as blown away as Marian was by Corky's playing.

Naturally I asked Corky if I could share it with you. She said, "Of course." Below is Corky on Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland in 1993 (just hover over the left side of the bar and click the "play" triangle). Having heard Corky peform recently, I can tell you she's playing better than ever. And if you want to reach Corky, email her at Corky Hale Productions: CorkyHale@aol.com

Corky Hale on Piano Jazz

- See more at: http://www.jazzwax.com/2013/08/corky-hale-marian-mcpartland.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Jazzwax+%28JazzWax%29#sthash.Qa65HKP0.dpuf
Used with permission by Marc Myers

Marian McPartland, jazz pianist and radio host, dies

The musician recorded with the likes of Dizzee Gillespie, Rosemary Clooney and Steely Dan

British-born pianist Marian McPartland, who became a fixture on the US jazz scene, has died aged 95.

For more than 40 years, the musician also hosted a US radio show, giving listeners an insight into the elusive topic of jazz improvisation.

Born Margaret Marian Turner in Windsor, she started out entertaining troops during WWII and married US soldier and cornetist Jimmy McPartland in 1946.

She died of natural causes at her home in Long Island, New York.

McPartland said she had been drawn to the piano at the age of three, after hearing her mother play.

"From that moment on, I don't remember ever not playing piano, day and night, wherever I was," she told US broadcaster NPR in 2007.

She studied classical piano at the Guildhall School Of Music but, to her family's disappointment, left the course and her home to tour with a vaudeville act aged 17.

"My mother said, 'Oh, you'll come to no good, you'll marry a musician and live in an attic'," she recalled. "Of course, that did happen."

After she married McPartland, whom she met during the war while playing a jam session in a tent on the Belgian border, the newly-weds moved to Chicago in 1946.

Prejudice

She played with her husband's band for a time but his traditional Dixieland style held less appeal than the adventurous sounds emanating from New York, where the couple resettled in 1949.

There, McPartland tracked down one of her idols, bebop pianist Mary Lou Williams, and began to engage with the jazz scene.

She succeeded despite the "three hopeless strikes against her," as critic Leonard Feather put it 1951: She was British, white and a woman.

In an essay included in McPartland's collected works, You've Come a Long Way, Baby, she wrote about the prejudice she faced at the start of her career.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23792381

McPartland, pictured on her 90th birthday, played piano every day from the age of three

Marian McPartland choses “Piano Jazz” successor: Jon Weber

Pianist and NPR “Piano Jazz” host Marian McPartland, age 93, has found a worthy successor to her post interviewing and duetting with musicians —  Jon Weber, 

an extraordinarily fluent keyboard artist with encyclopedia depth on many of the earliest styles of American improvised music. Though rather under-recorded, Jon excels at the most intricate (and frequently obscure) compositions of the great stride piano masters (James P. Johnson at their head) as well as writing and arranging his own works, which fall into the modern-mainstream category: tuneful, rhythmically varied, harmonically sophisticated. (Thanks to the Chicago Tribune’s Howard Reich for thisnews).

Jon has served as a host of one of the rooms of the annual Jazz Foundation of America loft benefit parties; I’ve seen/heard him wield the ready wit and engaging stage presence to pull off being almost-live on-air with guest musicians from across genres.

Ms. McPartland, captured in an amatuer video playing “I”m Old Fashioned” at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Colo (in Jazz at Lincoln Center) in 2010, initiated “Piano Jazz” in 1979, and it’s easier t0 name the musicians she hasn’t engaged in musical dialog than those she has.

A sophisticated and gracious woman — when I first met her in 1977 when reviewing her stand at Rick’s Café American in Chicago, she looked me up and down and said, flatteringly, “I was expecting a much older man” — she will be missed but not forgotten; dozens of the “Piano Jazz” shows are archived and she will long be listened to, mixing it up with Bill Evans, Mary Lou Williams, Eubie Blake, Elvis Costello with Allen Toussaint, among many others.

A hard act to follow, but welcome Jon! Come forth swinging.
howardmandel.com
http://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/2011/11/marian-mcpartland-choses-piano-jazz-successor-jon-weber.html

Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz

Guitarist Julian Lage is a true jazz prodigy and he's the guest next time on Piano Jazz. Discovered by Gary Burton when he was just 12 years old, Lage has since played with Herbie Hancock, Joe Lovano and Carlos Santana. Lage shows off his amazing technique and improvisatory abilities on "My Funny Valentine" before teaming with Marian McPartland on "You and the Night and the Music". Wednesday at 9:00pm on KPR 1. - http://www.kansaspublicradio.org/events.php?eventID=4825

Marian McPartland And Friends At Dizzy's Club Coca Cola

by Grant Jackson
Piano Jazz returns to Dizzy's Club Coca Cola for an encore session with Marian McPartland and friends, following the highly successful 30th anniversary celebration recorded just six months earlier. A variety of Piano Jazz friends perform a set of traditional New Orleans-flavored tunes and standards, as well as one of McPartland's own compositions.

The set opens with a Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler standard, "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," featuring McPartland at the piano, bassist Gary Mazzaroppi, drummer Glenn Davis and clarinetist Ken Peplowski. The rhythm section swings as Peplowski takes a tasty solo, dropping in a few bars of furious notes on the original jazz solo reed of choice; McPartland follows with her own swinging piano solo, which sounds as fresh as it did the day she first learned the tune.

At Dizzy's, the performers also celebrated Marian McPartland the composer. Along with Mazzaroppi and Davis, she accompanies the sultry-voiced Karrin Allyson in "Twilight World." McPartland's music, set to words provided by none other than Johnny Mercer, celebrates the magical, interstitial period between night and day, and accurately reflects the after-hours nature of the jazz club, which comes alive just as the workaday world is retiring for the evening.

Guest host Jon Weber follows with his masterful solo piano take on a playful Harlem stride tune, "Truckin'." The tempo builds to the furious pace of a freight hauler on a steep downhill grade, but Weber is masterful behind the wheel and keeps the tune under control, stopping on a dime.

Photo: Andrew Lepley/Redferns >>

"Royal Garden Blues," another traditional piece, was a favorite of Marian McPartland's late husband, trumpeter and singer Jimmy McPartland. And he would be proud of this rhythm section, along with trumpeter Nicholas Payton and clarinetist Ken Poplowski. The two-horn arrangement in this tune allows the band to cook up some authentic New Orleans-style counterpoint; Payton and Poplowski each play separate solo lines simultaneously, then stroll through the melody together before departing again. It's a fitting reminder of jazz's roots: complex and improvised, yet melodic and almost classical.

Pianist Helen Sung takes over piano duties from McPartland for "All the Things You Are," with Chris Potter joining in on sax for a soaring solo, along with the other rhythm players in this, the standard of jazz standards. Though it's a well-known tune, many listeners may not know that it was originally featured in an all-but-forgotten Oscar Hammerstein/Jerome Kern musical, Very Warm for May.

After a wonderful Helen Sung solo performance of "Nice Work If You Can Get It," McPartland returns to the piano bench for "Willow Weep for Me." She does a bit of solo stretching before the melody takes hold and Davis and Mazzaroppi join in. The ensuing tune is a rich, soulful rendition of this ballad. This magical evening comes to a close with the standard "Body and Soul." Nicholas Payton returns to the bandstand with a melancholy, Chet Baker-tinged trumpet performance, and McPartland gives an elegant piano solo. Payton comes back in and holds the final note high and long to end this wonderful return to one of the world's great jazz rooms on Piano Jazz.
Originally recorded Sept. 15, 2009.
 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127473978&ft=1&f=24

Jolly Good Show!

In a fine display of good sense and exemplary taste, Queen Elizabeth II has named pianist Marian McPartland an “Officer of the Order of the British Empire.” As British honors go, the only one higher is being named a “Dame.”

“I am thrilled and proud to have received this great honor bestowed on me by Queen Elizabeth,” said McPartland, who received the citation for services to jazz and for aspiring young musicians in the United States. “I am truly grateful.”

Sir Alan Collins, British Consul-General in New York, said: “I congratulate Ms. McPartland and Mr. [Peter Dyce] Tear on their well-deserved honors. Their awards are an acknowledgement of the significant contribution each has made to the arts and for their roles in strengthening the UK-US relationship.” Peter Dyce Tear, Executive Producer of 59E59 Theatres in New York, was awarded a Member of the British Empire honor for services to UK/US cultural relations.

Now 91, McPartland continues to showcase the world’s top musicians on NPR’s longest-running and most widely carried jazz program, “Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz,” which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. The long list of honors bestowed upon McPartland and the show include a George Foster Peabody Award, the Gracie Allen Award, the National Music Council’s American Eagle Award and a Grammy Trustee’s Award for lifetime achievement. After nearly 28 years as host of “Piano Jazz,” in 2007, Marian was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. She has received honorary degrees from Hamilton, Union, and Bates colleges, Bowling Green University and the University of South Carolina.
http://www.jazziz.com/news/2010/01/07/jolly-good-show/

Marian McPartland's 'Piano Jazz' Turns 30....

Daily News Headlines
Posted 1/6/2009

Marian McPartland's popular National Public Radio program, "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz," will celebrate its 30th year on the air in 2009. In celebration, McPartland will perform the New York debut of her first symphonic work, "A Portrait Of Rachel Carson," with the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra conducted by Richard Auldon Clark on Jan. 22 at the Trinity Wall Street Church. The concert will be free and open to the public.
McPartland composed "A Portrait Of Rachel Carson" at age 89, in honor of the influential environmentalist author of Silent Spring, which helped launch the modern conservation movement. She premiered the piece in November of 2007 with the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra as part of a special program conducted by Dr. Donald Portnoy.
Heard by more than a quarter million listeners on NPR each week, "Piano Jazz" is one of the longest-running jazz programs on NPR. The show features McPartland's encyclopedic knowledge of the jazz repertoire and her ability to adapt on-the-fly to the many styles and personalities of "Piano Jazz"'s more than 500 guests.

More info: trinitywallstreet.org
http://www.downbeat.com/default.asp?sect=news&subsect=news_detail&nid=1337

Marian McPartland's - 90th Birthday Concert: Set II

Marian McPartland's 90th-birthday celebration continues with more one-of-a-kind performances from a special concert at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola in Jazz at Lincoln Center. (Hear the first set.)
McPartland and her trio open the second set with a sweetly swinging version of "I'll Remember April," followed by a solo piano version of a tune from her latest CD (Twilight World), called "Blackberry Winter." The song, which has become one of McPartland's signatures, is special to her because it was written by her friend, the composer and music historian Alec Wilder. Wilder always insisted that jazz artists should stay true to the melody, and McPartland follows his admonition, though she does take the tune into several different keys before all is said and done.

Regina Carter is back in set two, joining the trio for "Lady Be Good" before inviting trumpeter Jeremy Pelt on stage for a soulful rendition of "Georgia on My Mind." Carter coaxes notes out of the Southern ether, while the young Pelt sounds equally sweet and reflective. In a playful mood, Carter closes a solo with the melody to "Happy Birthday."
Two of today's piano masters take the stage next in order to pay homage to the birthday girl. Jason Moran performs the rarely heard McPartland composition "Time and Time Again." Piano Jazz alumnus Kenny Barron follows, and he recalls some of his experiences with McPartland before performing "Memories of You" in her honor.

Norah Jones returns in set two for one more ballad, joining McPartland and the trio on "The Nearness of You." The concert concludes with a surprise appearance by the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis. The trumpeter strolled about the stage, bouncing notes off McPartland's piano strings as the two jammed on "All the Things You Are."
As a Web-only exclusive, this page features the surprise performance of the night — the McPartland Trio's take on "Turnaround," written by avant-garde jazz legend Ornette Coleman. It was the bluesiest cut on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sound Grammar. In her rendition, McPartland hit jagged piano chords and abstract figures with an energy that defied her much-celebrated age.
Credit > http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95823082