Bill evans interview marian mcpartland biography

The pianist Marian McPartland, who has died aged 95, made the performance of hard music look ridiculously easy.

Marian mcpartland

British-born but resident in the US from the end of the second world war, she was performing vivaciously into her late 80s, and still fronting her radio show two years ago. She appeared to lose virtually none of the graceful precision, infectious bounce and eager improvising adventurousness she had shown in her youth: her appearances in Britain late in her 70s saw her breeze unconcernedly through a rich mixture of standards, originals, Billy Strayhorn classics, the odd John Coltrane modal meditation, and even a stately fugue.

Casual listeners might occasionally sideline this offhand virtuosity as just generic mainstream jazz, the kind of thing murmuring distantly through the hubbub of the world's bars most nights of the week.

But a moment's closer attention would reveal there were flashing steel fingers inside McPartland's velvet-gloved approac