Avant-garde Jazz

Marilyn Crispell

Marilyn Crispell is an American pianist, composer, and educator, and an important voice in contemporary free jazz and improvised music. Her piano language combines intensity with lyrical lines, exploring the relationship among free improvisation, structure, and space. She was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2025 and received the Jazz Legacy Award established by the Jazz Foundation of America and the Mellon Foundation in 2026.

Born in Philadelphia and raised in Baltimore, Crispell studied piano at the Peabody Conservatory before graduating from the New England Conservatory, where she focused on classical piano and composition. In her late twenties, listening to John Coltrane led her deeply into jazz. She later studied with Charlie Banacos and was inspired by the improvisational practices of musicians such as Cecil Taylor, gradually developing a distinctive free-playing style. From 1977, she lived in Woodstock, New York, where she studied and taught at the Creative Music Studio and encountered avant-garde artists including Anthony Braxton.

Since emerging internationally in the late 1970s, Crispell has worked as a soloist and in trios, large improvising ensembles, and cross-disciplinary collaborations. She joined Anthony Braxton’s Creative Music Orchestra and played for years in his quartet; other collaborators include the Reggie Workman Ensemble, Barry Guy New Orchestra, Roscoe Mitchell, and Wadada Leo Smith. Her first solo release, Live in Berlin, appeared in 1982, with violinist Billy Bang, bassist Peter Kowald, and drummer John Betsch. She is known both for high-energy solos and for developing finely detailed, spacious chamber-like conversations.

Crispell’s work extends beyond jazz repertoire. She has performed and recorded music by contemporary composers including Robert Cogan, John Cage, and Pauline Oliveros, appeared with New York City Opera in Anthony Davis’s opera X, and collaborated with artists in film, video, dance, and poetry. Since 2018 she has been a member of Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry, appearing on the group’s self-titled ECM album and subsequent recordings. She has also led improvisation workshops and lectures in the United States, Europe, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand, co-directed the Vancouver Creative Music Institute, and taught at the Banff Centre’s international jazz workshop.

In March 2026, Crispell and Swedish bassist Anders Jormin released Memento, continuing their subtle and open-ended improvisational dialogue. Her career has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition, multiple New York Foundation for the Arts grants, and commissions from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. Through her continued performance and teaching, she treats improvisation as a compositional process shaped by listening, memory, and spontaneous form.

The photographs below are from Marilyn Crispell’s official photo page. Cover photo by Michael Patrick Kelly; photos in the article by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn and Claire Stefani.

by shauncat

Isaiah Collier

Isaiah Collier (born 1998 in Chicago) is an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist active in Chicago and Brooklyn. He began studying saxophone at 11 and formed The Chosen Few in 2017. In 2021, at Rudy Van Gelder’s legendary studio, he recorded the breakthrough album Cosmic Transitions using the same analog equipment as John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. DownBeat gave it a rare five-star review. His music carries forward the spiritual-jazz tradition, drawing on Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders; he is also a member of Chicago’s AACM. Later releases include the duo album I AM BEYOND with drummer Michael Shekwoaga Ode (2022), the direct-to-disc soul-jazz album Parallel Universe (2023), and the 2024 pair The Almighty, named one of The New York Times’ ten best jazz albums of the year, and The World Is On Fire. He received DownBeat Critics Poll Rising Star awards for tenor saxophone in 2023 and soprano saxophone in 2024, and was named 2024 Jazz Artist of the Year by the Chicago Tribune. In 2025, he presented a 60th-anniversary tribute to Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. His vocal-oriented EP Joy was released on Brownswood in 2026.https://www.colliersworld.com/Selected Releases: Cosmic Transitions (2021) · The Almighty (2024) · Joy EP (2026)Official Website

by shauncat