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Marilyn Crispell

Marilyn Crispell is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where she studied classical piano and composition, and has been a resident of Woodstock, New York since 1977 when she came to study and teach at the Creative Music Studio. She discovered jazz through the music of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and other contemporary jazz players and composers. For ten years she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble and has been a member of the Barry Guy New Orchestra and guest with his London Jazz Composers Orchestra, as well as a member of the Henry Grimes Trio, Quartet Noir (with Urs Leimgruber, Fritz Hauser and Joelle Leandre), and Anders Jormin's Bortom Quintet. In 2005 she performed and recorded with the NOW Orchestra in Vancouver, Canada and in 2006 she was co-director of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute and a faculty member at the Banff Centre International Workshop in Jazz. In 2014 she led a three-week music residency at the Atlantic Center For the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida, and in 2016 led a one-week residency at the Conservatory Manuel de Falla in Buenos Aires. In 2019 she will be a guiding artist at the Jazzdanmark Summer Session in Denmark. Currently she is touring and recording with two different trios: Joe Lovano's Trio Tapestry (with Carmen Castaldi) and a trio with Harvey Sorgen and Joe Fonda, as well as collaborating with Angelica Sanchez, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Gunhild Seim, Tyshawn Sorey, David Rothenberg and others.

Besides working as a soloist and leader of her own groups, Crispell has performed and recorded extensively with well-known players on the American and international jazz scene. She's also performed and recorded music by contemporary composers Robert Cogan, Pozzi Escot, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Manfred Niehaus and Anthony Davis (including four performances of his opera "X" with the New York City Opera).

In addition to playing, she has taught improvisation workshops and given lecture/demonstrations at universities and art centers in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and has collaborated with videographers, filmmakers, dancers and poets.

Crispell has been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship grants (1988-1989, 1994-1995 and 2006-2007), a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission (1988-1989), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005-2006). In 1996 she was given an Outstanding Alumni Award by the New England Conservatory, and in 2004, was cited as being one of their 100 most outstanding alumni of the past 100 years.

Marilyn Crispell at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem

by Paul Reynolds
April 23, 2026

Marilyn Crispell The National Jazz Museum in Harlem New York, NY April 16, 2026 What a time this is for Marilyn Crispell. Now 79, the stalwart of avant-garde piano was honored as a 2025 National Endowment of Arts Jazz Master and received a Jazz Legacies Fellowship from the Jazz Foundation of America this February. And her artistry is more than intact--it's evolving and diversifying, as her solo concert in New York last week ...

Album Review

Marilyn Crispell / Anders Jormin: Memento

Read "Memento" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
April 11, 2026

Even with her most youthful and combustible studies into our common language--1988's solo watermark Labyrinths (Victor); with Paul Motian and Reggie Workman, Live In Zurich (Leo, 1989); to the mature, questing, and timeless Amaryllis (Blue Note, 2001) with Motian and Gary Peacock; and the trio muscle of Dreamstruck (Not Two, 2018) alongside bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Harvey Sorgen--a quiet, abiding awe of human potential has always and forever held the center of Marilyn Crispell's heart, and thus, her music. ...

Album Review

Marilyn Crispell, Anders Jormin: Memento

by Neil Duggan
March 13, 2026

US pianist Marilyn Crispell and Swedish bassist Anders Jormin filter their decades of musical experience and improvisational instinct into Memento, their debut duo recording. Combining original compositions with four freely created pieces, the album focuses on the universal themes of memory and loss. Crispell, recently honored with a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, first met Jormin at a jny: Stockholm festival in 1992. It left a lasting mark on her musical thinking. “When I ...

Album Review

Anthony Braxton: Quartet (England) 1985

Read "Quartet (England) 1985" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
June 10, 2025

Though Leo Records has previously documented Quartet (London) 1985 (1988); Quartet (Birmingham) 1985 (1991); and Quartet (Coventry) 1985 (1993), Burning Ambulance Music is proud to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the tour with this set of previously unreleased recordings from Liverpool, Sheffield, Leicester, Bristol, Southampton, Leeds, and Huddersfield. Set to be digitally released exclusively on Bandcamp on what would have been Braxton's 80th birthday, (June 4, 2025), Quartet England (1985) is an unhinged glory from start to finish.

Interview

Marilyn Crispell: Fearless, Deeply Sensitive and Shaping the Moment

by Dean Nardi
April 30, 2025

As Marilyn Crispell talked about her multitude of recent recordings, either solo or with this trio or that quartet, she mentioned needing to pack her bags before going out on tour. She has lived in Woodstock, New York since 1977 and is comfortable there. “When I'm at home, not out recording, I look out in the morning and very much like being in this place," she explained. But when the opportunity came knocking at her door, she accepted because, “I ...

Album Review

Marilyn Crispell, Thommy Andersson, Michala Østergaard-Nielsen: The Cave

Read "The Cave" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
April 20, 2025

A temporal fragility warmly embraces as the The Cave opens with the title cut. And since a vast portion of the world's troubled population holds a childhood fear of caves and the potential human criteria that bound rowdy from them, things could get tricky. But they do not. Marilyn Crispell, in what could be another defining moment in a lifetime of bold defining moments, holds those anxieties at bay, and does so throughout this stunning testament. “My Spirit ...

Radio & Podcasts

Marilyn Crispell/Harvey Sorgen, The Young Mothers & B.B. King

by Maurice Hogue
December 9, 2024

If you haven't heard the piano trio, Dreamstruck (Marilyn Crispell, Joe Fonda & Harvey Sorgen), put them on your must-listen list. Highly original and free wheeling playing make their two releases much appreciated. Crispell and Sorgen decided to continue making magic as a duo on the new Forest, now available, and it's one of the feature albums in this playlist. There's a preview of an up-coming release by bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten's Young Mothers, as well as debuts from another ...

Contest

Enter the "Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell - Azure" Giveaway at All About Jazz!

Source: All About Jazz
June 29, 2013

All About Jazz members are invited to enter the ECM Records “Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell - Azure“ giveaway contest starting today. We'll select FIVE winners at the conclusion of the contest on July 29th. Click here to enter the contest

(Becoming a fan of Gary Peacock at AAJ automatically enters you in the contest.)

Good luck! Your Friends at ECM Records About Azure

Azure features beautiful duets by two great improvisers whose compatibility was proven long ago. ...
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209

Interview

Marilyn Crispell Interview

Source: All About Jazz
September 8, 2009

186

Radio

The Jazz Session #52: Marilyn Crispell

Source: All About Jazz
April 10, 2009

138

Performance / Tour

Marilyn Crispell, Saturday, Aug. 19--Maverick Jazz Series Woodstock, NY

Source: Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services
August 10, 2006

Marilyn Crispell, jazz piano, Saturday, Aug. 19, 8 pm

WOODSTOCK, N.Y., August 8 , 2006 -- Maverick's first Jazz Series comes to a close on Saturday, August 19, when piano great (and Woodstock resident) Marilyn Crispell will give a solo performance at 8:00 p.m.

Marilyn Crispell is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. For ten years she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble and has been a member of the ...
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Event

Daniel Abrams and Marilyn Crispell Rehearse For Tristan's Promise

Source: All About Jazz
July 22, 2004

Daniel Abrams and Marilyn Crispell rehearse for the forthcoming production of ABRAMS' new play Tristan's Promise being presented by the Woodstock Guild at the historic Byrdcliffe Barn (part of America's oldest ungoing art's colony) on Friday, August 27 & Saturday, August 28th at 8pm. The play is about the interrelationship of two concert pianists and their manager (played by John Michalski) and the music performed by the two pianists, both separately and together, will range from Mozart to Wagner to ...
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147

Performance / Tour

Lee Konitz, Marilyn Crispell, Geri Allen, Ray Brown, Holly Hofmann...

Source: All About Jazz

BYRONIK.COM - March 9, 2002

Sax man Konitz comes late to the party but brings three women By MICHAEL C. BURGESS BYRONIK.COM — March 9, 2002

The talents of three supremely accomplished female jazz performers: pianists Marilyn Crispell and Geri Allen, and flutist Holly Hofmann, are to be showcased by the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in its Spring 2002 Jazz at The Neurosciences Institute concerts, San Diego, CA.

And, for the first ...
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"Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." —Jon Pareles, N.Y. Times "Ms Crispell has created a rich personal expression that is breathtaking in its originality and visceral energy." —Amy Duncan, Christian Science Monitor "seeing and hearing Crispell play live is a stunning experience.... a passionate motivation that approaches shamanistic spirituality." "labyrinthine structures held together by a deeply personal logic" "one of the most technically brilliant, imaginative and impassioned contemporary musicians now expanding the expressive potential of the piano." —Derk Richardson, The East Bay Express (CA) "Her improvisational approach is so personal, so explosive and so devastating that it makes jazz (and most other music) sound like the archaic language of an ancient people