Marilyn Crispell (born March 30, 1947) is an American jazz pianist and composer. Scott Yanow said she is a strong performer who uses pauses and timing in her own unique way. He noted she is among the best in her field. Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that listening to Marilyn Crispell play piano alone is like watching a volcano erupt. He added she is one of the few pianists who successfully perform free jazz. In addition to her work as a soloist or leader of musical groups, Crispell has been a longtime member of saxophonist Anthony Braxton's quartet during the 1980s and 1990s.

Biography

Crispell was born in Philadelphia and moved to Baltimore when she was ten years old. She attended Western High School there. She began studying classical piano at the Peabody Conservatory at age seven and also started improvising early, thanks to a teacher who required all students to improvise, no matter their skill level. Later, she attended the New England Conservatory of Music, where she studied piano and composition. She graduated in 1968. Crispell was not interested in jazz until 1975, when she was living on Cape Cod and first heard John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. She said, "The emotional and spiritual quality of it made me feel very strongly… It was the most powerful experience I have ever had. Listening to A Love Supreme over and over that night completely changed my life."

She soon returned to Boston, where she studied jazz privately with Charlie Banacos for two years. She explained, "I had to start from the beginning. I had to practice in twelve different keys. I had to write seven solos for every piece in every key. I had to listen to many recordings and write them down to understand how musicians used chords, notes, and scales. How did they play outside of these rules?"

While in Boston, she met saxophonist Charlie Mariano, who suggested she attend sessions at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY, which was founded by Karl Berger, Ingrid Sertso, and Ornette Coleman. In 1977, she visited the studio for a summer and met musicians like Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Davis, and Oliver Lake. She recalled meeting Cecil Taylor: "He was playing pool, and there was a piano nearby. I sat at the piano and played for him. When I finished, he kissed my hand and said, 'This lady can play!' I still feel honored when people compare me to him." (At the time, people often called her "the female Cecil Taylor" because of her intense piano style and her tendency to play many notes continuously.) She said about the Creative Music Studio: "It was a special place for the kind of music we do. If it had been in New York City, I don’t think the experience would have been the same. Here, we lived and worked with the artists in a motel setting. People stayed up all night making bonfires and playing music with musicians from around the world. It was a meaningful human experience, and I met many people I later played with." After the session, Crispell moved to Woodstock and has lived there ever since.

At the Creative Music Studio, she also met Anthony Braxton, who invited her to perform with his group. She said, "At our first gig, Anthony gave me a beer and told me, 'Relax, don’t play so many notes.' I was playing very fast, and he was the first person to teach me about space, breath, and phrasing instead of playing constantly." She soon joined Braxton’s Creative Music Orchestra and his quartet, which included bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Gerry Hemingway. She was a member from 1983 to 1995 and made about a dozen recordings with Braxton. She also began releasing music under her own name. She said about her time with the group: "It felt like a family. Playing with Anthony taught me about space, silence, and how to use composition in improvisation. His music was similar to classical composers but had more freedom for interpretation." Since then, silence and space have become important parts of her music. She said in an interview, "When I first started playing creative music, I didn’t leave much silence. I focused on showing what I could do. Now, I think differently."

In the late 1970s and 1980s, she worked and recorded with musicians like Reggie Workman, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, the Barry Guy New Orchestra, the European Quartet Noir (with Urs Leimgruber, Fritz Hauser, and Joëlle Léandre), and Babatunde Olatunji. In 1981, she performed at the Woodstock Jazz Festival, which celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Creative Music Studio.

In the early 1990s, her style changed when she visited Stockholm and heard a Swedish group led by bassist Anders Jormin. She said, "It touched me deeply… It opened the door to more lyrical and tender music I wanted to play but hadn’t before." She soon performed and recorded with Jormin and his Bortom Quintet. In 1996, she recorded Nothing Ever Was, Anyway: Music of Annette Peacock with Gary Peacock, Paul Motian, and Annette Peacock, her first album for ECM. She said about her ECM recordings: "The music I’ve done with ECM focuses more on inner intensity than outer energy. I see a connection between wild energy and deep introversion—they are two sides of the same coin. I do both and feel they are connected. With ECM, I enjoy playing slowly, almost as if time stops."

Crispell has continued to perform and record as a soloist and leader of her own groups. She has also played with the Evan Parker Trio, an all-female trio led by Lotte Anker, Tisziji Munoz, Ivo Perelman, Scott Fields, the Copenhagen Art Ensemble, Trio Tapestry with saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer Carmen Castaldi, Trio 3 (Reggie Workman, Oliver Lake, Andrew Cyrille), the Dave Douglas Trio, Tyshawn Sorey, and many other musicians. She has also performed and recorded music by composers like John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Robert Cogan, Pozzi Escot, Manfred Niehaus, and Anthony Davis, including his opera X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X with the New York City Opera.

She has taught improvisation workshops and given lectures worldwide. She has collaborated with poets, dancers, filmmakers, and vide

Discography

• Poetic Justice (Dacapo, 2001)
• Puzzlebox (Moonjune, 2022)
• The Way I Hear It (Uptee Productions, 1998)
• Composition 98 (hatART, 1981)
• Six Compositions (Quartet) 1984 (Black Saint, 1985)
• Quartet (London) 1985 (Leo, 1985 [1988])
• Prag 1984 (Quartet Performance) (Sound Aspects, 1984 [1990])
• Quartet (Birmingham) 1985 (Leo, 1985 [1991])
• Willisau (Quartet) 1991 (hatART, 1991)
• Quartet (Coventry) 1985 (Leo, 1985 [1993])
• (Victoriaville) 1992 (Victo, 1993)
• Twelve Compositions: Recorded Live in July 1993 at Yoshi's in Oakland California (Music & Arts, 1994)
• Creative Orchestra (Köln) 1978 (hatART, 1978 [1995])
• Quartet (Santa Cruz) 1993 (hatART, 1993 [1997])
• The Coventry Concert (Bootleg / Unauthorized, 2006)
• Orchestra (Paris) 1978 (Bootleg / Unauthorized, 2011)
• Quartet (New York) 1993 – Set 1 (Bootleg / Unauthorized, 2011)
• Quartet (New York) 1993 – Set 2 (Bootleg / Unauthorized, 2011)
• The Complete Remastered Recordings on Black Saint & Soul Note (C.A.M. Jazz, 2011)
• Quartet (Karlsruhe) 1983 (live, archival) (New Braxton House, 2012)
• Quartet (Mulhouse) 1983 (live, archival) (New Braxton House, 2012)
• CMS Archive Selections, Volume 2 (Planet Arts, 2015)
• Stolen Moment (Ictus, 2020)
• River Tiger Fire (Fundacja Słuchaj!, 2015)
• 48 Motives, January 11, 1996 (Cadence, 1996)
• Five Frozen Eggs (Music & Arts, 1997)
• Stephen Dembski – Sonotropism (Music & Arts, 1997)
• Geggie Project (Ambiances Magnétiques, 2008)
• Parallel Moments Unbroken (FMR, 2018)
• Blue Horizon. Barry Guy@70 [Live At The Ad Libitum Festival 2017] (Fundacja Słuchaj!, 2018)
• Three Pieces for Orchestra (Intakt, 1997)
• Double Trouble Two (Intakt, 1998)
• Inscape–Tableaux (Intakt, 2001)
• Gryffgryffgryffs: The 1996 Radio Sweden Concert (live) (Music & Arts, 1997)
• Odyssey (Intakt, 2001)
• Ithaca (Intakt, 2004)
• Phases of the Night (Intakt, 2008)
• Deep Memory (Intakt, 2016)
• Any Terrain Tumultuous (Red Toucan, 1995)
• In Winds, In Light (ECM, 2004)
• Eternity Blue (Shanachie, 1995)
• Five Facings (FMP, 1996)
• Joëlle Léandre Project (Leo, 2000)
• Stone Quartet: DMG @ The Stone Volume 1: December 22, 2006 (DMG/ARC, 2008)
• Stone Quartet: Live at Vision Festival (Ayler, 2011)
• Quartet Noir (Victo, 1999

Filmography

• "Rising Tones Cross" (1985), directed by Ebba Jahn
• Femmes du Jazz / Women in Jazz (2000), by Gilles Corre
• The Songpoet (2019), by Paul Lamont
• Motian in Motion (2020), by Michael Patrick Kelly
• ECM50 | 2000 – Marilyn Crispell (part of a series of 51 short films about ECM from 2020), by IJ.Biermann

Additional sources

Crispell, Marilyn. 2000. "Elements of Improvisation: For Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton." In Arcana: Musicians on Music, edited by John Zorn, 190–192. New York: Granary Books/Hips Road.