Notes from disappearance
Last time
we have listened to a solo work by Marilyn Crispell was in 2008 when she and
her piano whispered us her Vignettes. But
during those six years she has released three albums as a part of a duo. In
2010 Marilyn Crispell told us One dark
night I left my silent house, along with the clarinetist David Rothenberg.
In 2013 she recorded Azure with the
double-bassist Gary Peacock, also a long solo career musician who has also
played with major figures of the jazz scene like Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett and
Jan Garbarek. Finally, recently she has
released the album Parallel moments with
the saxophonist and composer Raymond MacDonald. Playing with some tracks
titles, the album is a way of subtle freedom to illumination.
Born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1947, she 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 where
she studied and became teacher at the Creative Music Studio. She started her
career as a pianist and composer of contemporary improvised music in 1978 with
some recordings with the Anthony Braxton Creative Orchestra, and in 1979 with Leo
Smith & the Roscoe Mitchell Creative Orchestra, but they were mainly
rehearsals and private recordings. Her first album was Anthony Braxton’s Composition 98 in 1981, but her debut
solo recording was Spirit music recorded
in 1981 too but released in 1983. Just after her solo recording in September
1981 she played along with Chick Corea,
Pat Metheny and Lee Konitz at the Woodstock Jazz Festival.
Since then,
Marilyn Crispell’s talent along with her passion for Cecil Taylor and John
Coltrane, she dedicated to him the album For
Coltrane recorded in 1987, have given us wonderful works. Besides working
as a soloist and leader of her own groups, Crispell has performed and recorded
extensively with major figures of the 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) also working with dancers, poets, film-makers and visual artists, and
teaching workshops in improvisation. She has been the recipient of three New
York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a
Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission.
Marilyn
Crispell defines her own music as an approach to improvisation in a very
compositional way, following a logical development after the first notes she
plays. Her studies in composition and the huge background in music knowledge
along with her natural and magnificent music talent give her the intuition
enough to find always a wonderful way to compose which always becomes our best
way to discover her spirit although she admits she always tries to forget
herself and disappear, but we always
feel her very close.
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo courtesy of Marilyn Crispell
Marilyn Crispell website www.marilyncrispell.com
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