Marilyn Crispell
b. Marilyn Braune, 30 March 1947, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Crispell began piano lessons at the age of seven, later studying classical piano at the Peabody Music School in Baltimore, where she spent her later childhood, and piano and composition at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. After graduating in 1969, she gave up music for marriage and medical work. Six years later she divorced and moved to Cape Cod, where a local pianist, George Kahn, introduced her to modern jazz on record. One night, listening to John Coltrane's A LOVE SUPREME, ‘something in the music—its feeling, its energy— caught me: I became incredibly moved. I said to myself, I have to learn to play this music. I loved it so much.’ She studied jazz harmony with teacher Charlie Banacos in Boston, then attended Karl Berger's Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, later staying on to work as a teacher. At the studio, she met Anthony Braxton and toured Europe in his Creative Music Orchestra in 1978, later recording on his COMPOSITION 98 in 1981. By the early '80s she had started to develop her own music, both solo ( RHYTHMS HUNG IN UNDRAWN SKY, CONCERT IN BERLIN) and in a group that featured Billy Bang and drummer John Betsch ( SPIRIT MUSIC, LIVE IN BERLIN). This sudden flurry of releases was followed by a series of albums on the UK Leo Records label: AND YOUR IVORY VOICE SINGS(a duo with drummer Doug James), QUARTET IMPROVISATIONS—PARIS 1986and GAIA, a trio with James and Reggie Workman that WIRE magazine later voted one of the top 50 albums of the '80s. Crispell continued to work with Braxton, becoming a regular member of his quartet in 1983, and also joined Workman's Ensemble ( SYNTHESIS, IMAGES), as well as playing occasional concerts with a wide range of artists: Andrew Cyrille (one duo track on the compilation LIVE AT THE KNITTING FACTORY VOLUME THREE), Leo Smith, Anthony Davis (in his opera, X), Pauline Oliveros, Tim Berne Marcio Mattos and Eddie Prevost, with whom she toured in the UK as a duo in 1991. Recent recordings of her own music have included the solos LABYRINTHSand LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO, duos with Braxton and Irène Schweizer, two trio sets—THE KITCHEN CONCERT, with her Braxton Quartet colleagues Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway; LIVE IN ZURICH, with Workman and Paul Motian—and an electrifying ensemble session, CIRCLES, with Workman, Hemingway and saxophonists Peter Buettner and Oliver Lake, which had writer Ben Watson enthusing that she had ‘tapped into the physical assault of late Trane’. In fact, while Coltrane remains an idol—and her versions of his Dear Lord and After The Rain show an astonishing power and beauty—it is Cecil Taylor, with his phenomenal force, speed and intensity, who is her primary musical influence; and she also cites Thelonious Monk, Paul Bley, Leo Smith, African pop music (for its rhythmic qualities) and Braxton (for his use of space and structure) as important models. Taylor has lauded her work as spearheading ‘a new lyricism’, but— although recent albums have explored more reflective modes—the essential components of her music are, as she stated in 1988, counterpoint, pointillism and, especially, energy: ‘I think of energy as carrying itself forward (in the music), being directed but not decided …When you're really hooked into the music, you can reach another level of energy that goes beyond the mechanics of it; a feeling of going higher, to a non-mundane state.’ One of the most exciting improvisers to have appeared in the last 20 years, Crispell is the first and perhaps to date the only genuine member of a post-Taylor era of jazz pianism: she has not merely accommodated elements of his style into her playing, but has used his language as the launching-pad from which she has developed her own, entirely personal and utterly distinctive music. To quote Braxton, ‘she has the kind of facility that is awesome’.