Marian McPartland

Jazz musician, born in Windsor, S England, UK. A versatile pianist, she moved to the USA (1945) and led a trio from 1951. In 1973 she began a parallel career as the host of jazz radio programmes.

Marian McPartland, born Margaret Marian Turner on March 21, 1918 in England near Slough, Buckinghamshire, is a British jazz pianist.

She was a musical prodigy from the time she could sit at the piano, about the age of three.

She pursued classical studies at the Guildhall School of Music in London.

While touring with USO shows in Belgium, she met and began to play with a Chicago cornetist named Jimmy McPartland in 1943.

After the war, the couple moved to Chicago. With Jimmy's help and encouragement, Marian started her own trio in 1952 and began a long residency at the famous New York City jazz nightclub, the Hickory House, from 1952-1960.

She began her own record label, Halcyon Records, and gradually began recording her own compositions, along with solo and ensemble works by others.

On June 4, 1978, she began hosting her own radio program on National Public Radio, Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, currently the longest-running cultural program on NPR.

McPartland is committed to music education and was inducted into the International Association of Jazz Education Hall of Fame in 1986. She has received honorary degrees from Bates College, Bowling Green State University, Hamilton College, Union College, and the University of South Carolina.