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Chris Searle on Jazz: Passionate percussion
Marilyn Mazur’s drumming beats out her path to the constellation of jazz legends

Small Labyrinths, Elixir and Celestial Circle
Marilyn Mazur
(ECM)
5/5

The phenomenal percussionist Marilyn Mazur has the drums of the world in her blood. She was born in Brooklyn of African-American and Polish parentage in 1955 and came to live in Denmark when she was six.

Mazur began a musical life as a dancer, but burned to the drums in 1974, eventually gaining a degree in percussion from the Royal Danish Academy of Music. She drummed with prime Danish jazz musicians such as guitarist Pierre Doerge and his New Jungle Orchestra, bassist Niels-Henning Oersted Pedersen and tenorist John Tchicai, and began a 14-year touring partnership with the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek in 1985.

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