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Marian McPartland/Willie Pickens: Ain't Misbehavin': Live at the Jazz Showcase
by Dave Nathan
One usually hears Marian McPartland working in tandem with another pianist on her long running NPR show. But here she matches up with venerable Chicago piano stylist Willie Pickens during a week long run at Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase in the Windy City in December of 2000. What a happy Christmas present for Chicago jazz fans. This album compiles the highlight from that endeavor. There's no fooling with original or unfamiliar material on this gig. These two sublime pianists do ...
read moreMarian McPartland & Willie Pickens: Ain't Misbehavin'
by Jim Santella
Five duets and two solo pieces apiece give veteran pianists Marian McPartland and Willie Pickens plenty of room to stretch out. This live session was recorded just before Christmas last year at Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase in Chicago. The program of chestnuts leaves room for individual interpretation, as well as the chance to recall a familiar melody or two. Handfuls of keys are flying everywhere; but, with purpose. Pickens, who began his career with Eddie Harris on his memorable hit ...
read moreMarian McPartland and Willie Pickens: Ain't Misbehavin'-- Live at the Jazz Showcase
by Bob Powers
Liner notes can produce fascinating facts. In the notes by Neil Tesser for “Ain’t Misbehavin’ -- Live at the Jazz Showcase, we learn that McPartland got her start in show business in a British musical act called Billy Mayerl and His Claviers. That insignificant fact points out that McPartland has been around for a long time. She reaches 81 this year and finding evidence of any decline in her abilities requires cautious listening.In this pairing with Chicago legend ...
read moreMarian McPartland: The Single Petal Of A Rose
by John Sharpe
Like pure spring water from a bottomless well, jazz musicians continue to draw inspiration from the mammoth Ellington songbook. Pianist Marian McPartland, who has spent more than 60 years in music, adds to an ever-growing number of tribute CDs with the classy Single Petal Of A Rose. Recording live before an intimate gathering of 50 at the Maybeck Studio for the Performing Arts in Berkeley, CA, seems to have contributed to the session's warm, relaxed feel. Working with bassist Bill ...
read moreMarian McPartland: On 52nd Street
by AAJ Staff
Re-release by re-release, Savoy Jazz is revealing for jazz enthusiasts the richness of its library, built with an iron fist but with perspicacity, by owner Herman Lubinsky. The latest re-issue to astound listeners with head-scratching wonder (I wonder why this wasn't available before) is a documentation of some of Marian McPartland's earliest popular recordings, which led to her later renown. An institution at the Hickory House in the 1950's, McPartland's trio went through several personnel changes. Concord's “Hickory House Trio ...
read moreMarian McPartland's Hickory House Trio: Reprise
by Ed Kopp
Along with fellow pianist Dave Brubeck, Marian McPartland is a jazz wonder who continues to make great music at an advanced age. To celebrate her 80th birthday, McPartland reconvened her 1950s trio that served as the house band at the old Hickory House on 52nd Street in New York.Bassist Bill Crow and drummer Joe Morello reunited with McPartland at the new Birdland in September 1998. The trio played together for two nights, and this resulting live CD is ...
read moreMarian McPartland: Reprise
by Jim Santella
The reunion of Marian McPartland’s Hickory House Trio on a September weekend in 1998 was recorded live at Birdland. The format they use for much of the session hasn’t changed in fifty years: piano lead, bass solo, and trading fours with a charged-up drummer. And why shouldn’t the format remain constant? McPartland, Bill Crow, and Joe Morello do it as well as the best jazz has to offer. From her start as a pianist with a vaudeville act in her ...
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