To encourage thoughtful digestion, or any digestion at all, I like Marian McPartland. For years she had a show on public radio. She would invite her peers to sit at the piano, discuss their style with disarming accuracy, and then say, “Shall we play something together?” The result was some of the best off-hand jazz collaborations. She could imitate any style and satirize it, too. Her own style was brilliance without guile. At a club in Washington, D.C., I used to watch her go through a pack of cigarettes every set, crushing them out on the piano-top ashtray with the same unselfconscious ease
...more
