Marilyn Crispell

Vignettes (ECM 2027), Storyteller (ECM 1847), Amaryllis (ECM 1742) and One Dark Night I Left my Silent House (ECM 2089)

A COMPELLING pianist whose sounds span the perceived gulfs between classical music and jazz, Marilyn Crispell was born in Philadelphia in 1947 and studied classical piano and composition and the New England Conservatory of Music as a young woman. She virtually abandoned music for medicine for six years, but began singing blues in a folk rock group after the breakdown of her marriage. She then discovered the free jazz beauties and profundities of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and the pioneering free pianism of Cecil Taylor, and since the 1970s she has performed and recorded prolifically as a jazz artist and improviser with many of the US eminences of the avant-garde, from multiple reedman Anthony Braxton and arch-bassist Reggie Workman to European free masters like Evan Parker and Barry Guy.