Dave Brubeck has called Marian McPartland one of the top 3 jazz pianists of all time!

Click here to read about Marian, a recipient of the 2000 NEA Jazz Masters award.

Born Margaret Marian Turner in Windsor, England, the host of Piano Jazz began to teach herself Chopin waltzes on the piano by ear when she was only three years old.

Marian later pursued classical training at London’s Guildhall School of Music before joining a four-piano vaudeville act that traveled throughout Europe during World War II entertaining the Allied troops.

While on tour in Belgium, she met and began to play with her future husband, Chicago Cornetist Jimmy McPartland. In the U.S. after the war, Marian performed for a brief time with her husband’s Dixieland band.

But Marian heard the call of bebop and began to head in other musical directions. She formed her own trio and landed a two-week gig at the renowned Hickory House in New York City. With her ability to gently shepherd a poignant ballad, to swing with real power, and to stay ahead of new developments in jazz, Marian turned those two weeks into a ten-year residency. It became a gathering place for jazz colleagues like Oscar Petersen, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.

In addition to hosting Piano Jazz, Marian maintains a busy schedule, recording, touring, lecturing and teaching year-round. She is deeply committed to music education in the country’s public schools and was inducted into the International Association of Jazz Education Hall of Fame in 1986. She has received honorary degrees from Hamilton, Union and Bates Colleges, Bowling Green University and the University of South Carolina. Her books include The Artistry of Marian McPartland, a collection of transcriptions released by Columbia Pictures Publications, and All in Good Time, jazz profiles published by the Oxford University Press. In 1983 Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz received a George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.

In 2001, the long list of honors bestowed upon Marian and the show added a “Gracie” – the Gracie Allen Award given annually by American Women in Radio and Television – and the National Music Council’s American Eagle Award.

Piano Jazz, now in its 26th year, boasts a guest list that reads like a who’s who of modern music, from Tony Bennett, Henry Mancini and Dave Brubeck to Ray Charles and Dizzy Gillespie. Even Alicia Keys, Elvis Costello and Norah Jones have shared time – and a keyboard –with McPartland.

Perhaps no one in this day and age has done more to bring jazz and the history of jazz to the public than Marian McPartland. Through her NPR radio program, Piano Jazz, she has almost single-handedly brought the famous and the not so famous (but still incredible), performers to the public’s attention. Marian’s own playing is incredibly beautiful, harmonically advanced and swings hard with or without a rhythm section. Every week her ability to make people feel at home, to fully integrate herself with whomever her guest is, is simply amazing. Some of her best programs are on CD and are a treasure trove of jazz history.