Interview with Ann Bogle

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:12:36 -0500

Ann Bogle is a fiction writer who has published widely in a number of journals. She has been keeping the unique blog Ana Verse for since 2006. This interview focuses on her work that appeared in the 2009 Big Bridge.

Interview with Marilyn Crispell, Part 3

Fri, 2 Jan 2009 16:24:59 -0600

"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)
"one of the great performer composers at work today. Not only is the music fresh and alive, but its improvisational components hold together more than the music of many composers who write in a similar fashion."  Ear Magazine
"one of a handful of great contemporary improvising musicians"  Larry Kelp, The Tribune (Oakland, CA)
<http://www.marilyncrispell.com>

Interview with Marilyn Crispell, Part 2

Fri, 2 Jan 2009 16:06:15 -0600

“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 will be co-director of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute and a faculty member at the Banff Centre International Workshop in Jazz.
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 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.”
<http://www.marilyncrispell.com/bio.htm>

Interview with Marilyn Crispell, Part 1

Fri, 2 Jan 2009 15:57:25 -0600

The recording is a little rough. A full transcription of this interview is on my blog, Experimental Fiction / Poetry / Jazz

Marilyn Crispell is a leading jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader. She has worked with such luminaries as Anthony Braxton, Paul Motian, Gary Peacock, Evan Parker, and many, many more. On her own albums, from about 1980 to 1996, she played a brilliant form of what could be called ‘energy’ music. Since then, after signing with ECM records, her own recordings have tended to be mroe lyrical, melodic, and harmonic. That said, she is still far from what might be called the mainstream. This interview centers on her latest release, a solo effort on the ECM label entitled Vignettes.

World Premiere Stein Opera: Greg Hewett Part 3

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:42:07 -0600