Marilyn Crispell, Jazz Master

Key early works by a legendary pianist

Marilyn Crispell

Pianist Marilyn Crispell was named an NEA Jazz Master this year. The celebration took place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC last month and also honored saxophonist and Sun Ra Arkestra leader Marshall Allen; pianist Chucho Valdés; and critic Gary Giddins. She has also just been announced as one of two winners, along with trumpeter Bobby Bradford, of the 2025 Instant Award in Improvised Music.

Here’s a video of her speaking about her work:

At the Jazz Masters concert, Crispell performed in duo with bassist Reggie Workman, an NEA Jazz Master himself (class of 2020). The two of them have recorded together more than once, including on his albums Synthesis and Altered Spaces and her albums Live In Zurich and Gaia.

Live In Zurich was recorded at the Taktlos Festival in April 1989, the second of three performances Crispell and her trio gave there. She and Workman were joined by drummer Paul Motian for a set consisting of four of her compositions and a closing version of John Coltrane’s “Dear Lord”.

Crispell’s style at this point in her career was extremely forceful. Jon Pareles of the New York Times once described listening to her as “like monitoring an active volcano”, and the 22-minute set opener, “Areas/Solstice”, is very much in the pounding “free jazz” tradition, with audible connections to the work of Cecil Taylor, Bobby Few and Don Pullen. She begins the performance singing wordlessly, a kind of almost liturgical chant backed by subtle effects from Motian, and then they duet, piano and drums, for a little bit before Workman, whose bass is deep and loud throughout, joins the music. But every time the performance seems to be going all the way out into elbows-on-the-keyboard territory, Crispell pulls back and the trio follows her, retreating into a swinging blues groove that allows for retrenchment. And when she comes in at the halfway mark of “Night Light Beach II”, after a five-minute Workman solo, her playing is simultaneously romantic and cerebral, each note seemingly picked out with care, like she’s solving a math problem on a giant blackboard as an audience watches. And while “Duets/Point in Time”, which includes a high-impact Motian solo, is pretty volcanic, the closing “Dear Lord” is a beautiful ballad, with Workman’s bowed bass shadowing Crispell’s rapturous filigrees.

Gaia is a studio album, recorded in 1987 and released the following year, with Workman on bass and Doug James on drums; Crispell plays piano and harp, and all three musicians double on percussion. It’s a five-part suite, its tracks untitled.

The first piece is a gentle, sweeping introduction that features Crispell playing both inside the piano and at the keyboard, with the other two offering gentle waves of percussion that wax and wane. The second piece is intensely rhythmic, with James laying down an almost New Orleans-esque rhythm that soon becomes a series of crashes as Crispell delivers rippling, Cecil Taylor-esque runs and Workman bounces in the middle, sounding to my ear like Charle Haden on Ornette Coleman’s “Street Woman” (from 1972’s Science Fiction). The third piece is a fascinating, high-energy sprint that features intense, repetitive phrases from Crispell and a wild bass and drum interlude. On the fourth track, Crispell and Workman play a unison melody, then gradually diverge, the bassist bowing introspectively, the pianist offering rippling, discursive responses. It’s a beautiful piece, and should have been longer. The final track begins with an extended Workman solo, eventually erupting into some of the hardest, most aggressive free jazz of the entire disc.

Live In Zurich and Gaia are brilliant records that show Crispell reaching an early peak as a leader/solo artist. Her style would change quite a bit in the coming years, but in the ’80s she was a powerhouse, and both these albums belong in your collection.

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