AP News, November 15th, 2007
Marian McPartland isn't ready to slow down.
"Retire? Why retire? I've got a job, I'm making money, and I like what I do," says McPartland, host of National Public Radio's "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" for nearly 30 years.
"I can't walk. I'm in miserable pain. But at the piano, I don't feel a thing," she says of the arthritis that bends her tiny form but hardly curbs her sense of humor.
She is looking forward to celebrating her 90th birthday in March.
"I think I'll jump out of a cake, or something," she laughs.
McPartland was in South Carolina for the premiere of her symphonic work, "A Portrait of Rachel Carson," inspired by Carson's 1962 environmental book, "Silent Spring."
Her appearance Tuesday at a University of South Carolina master class delighted students. On Thursday, she hoped to delight an audience with her symphonic work.
"I'll fiddle around in the background. ... It's hard because I don't want to intrude," the pianist says of her part in the performance. She says the composition includes "lots of far-out chords" that portray the dissonance of environmental harm to nature.
"I hope people will hear them sawing down trees. Birds are singing in the first part, but there's no birds left in the second," she says. "I'm an environmentalist ... I thought the only thing I can do to protect (the world) from the terrible things that are going on is to portray it through music."
Although trained as a classical pianist, McPartland never learned to read or write musical scores. She hired an assistant to transcribe her improvisation. "I just played my thoughts. I just sat down and did it," she says.
McPartland, who lives on New York's Long Island and tapes her radio show in Manhattan, had the score arranged for an orchestra. Conductor Donald Portnoy invited her to debut the work with the University of South Carolina Symphony.
Her radio program is produced by South Carolina Educational Television. She was tapped for the job when the show's precursor lost its host to illness in 1978. "Piano Jazz" was born, and McPartland has been on the air ever since.
With more than 650 shows to her credit, McPartland says there are only a few music greats who haven't appeared.
"I've been chasing Stevie Wonder for years. I hope to get him before I die," she deadpanned.
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On the Net:
National Public Radio:
http://www.npr.org/
South Carolina Educational Television:
http://www.scetv.org/
