Jazz breaking news: Pianist and broadcaster Marian McPartland dies aged 95
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Legendary jazz pianist, writer and broadcaster Marian McPartland (OBE) has died, aged 95 at her home in Port Washington, Long Island, New York.
McPartland was mostly known for her popular, long running radio show Piano Jazz, broadcast on National Public Radio (NPR) between 1978 and 2011.
Born Marian Turner in Slough, she began playing the piano at age three, and was accepted into the Guildhall School of Music and Drama at 17. She left in her third year to play piano for a travelling vaudeville show, and during World War Two she entertained allied troops where she met her future husband, Jimmy McPartland.
Living and playing in New York in the 1950s, she led her own trio, featuring drummer Joe Morello, at venues such as the Hickory House on 52nd Street. In 1958 she posed for the iconic photograph ‘A Great Day in Harlem’ with 56 other notable Jazz musicians of the day. On her 95th birthday in 2013, McPartland was one of only four from the photograph who were still alive: Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver and Benny Golson being the other three.
McPartland’s broadcasting career began in 1964 when she hosted a radio show for WBAI-FM in New York, playing recordings and interviewing jazz musicians. She began her first series of Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz on NPR in June 1978 and it has since become one of the longest running jazz programmes on radio, featuring some of the biggest names in jazz.
In 2004 she won a Lifetime Achievement award at the Grammy Awards, and in 2010 she was given an OBE in the New Year Honours.
She continued to perform and tour well into her 80s, but in November 2011 it was announced that Marian McPartland had retired from Piano Jazz, having not recorded a new show since September 2010.