Marian McPartland celebrates 90 at Dizzy's Coca Cola

Marian McPartland pictured with students at Usdan. (Handout)

When she talks about falling down at home in Port Washington, she makes it seem such a trifle that she passes by the details, save for the important one: "I fractured my pelvis," Marian McPartland says, adding, as if she just remembered something else, "like a jerk. It was about two weeks before Christmas. You can't do anything for it except sit around and wait until you get better."

McPartland - pianist, composer, author and radio host - turns 90 Thursday. When you're entering your 10th decade, a pelvis injury sounds close to calamitous. And yet, if you know McPartland, the stoicism, humor and grace she conveys over the phone while talking about such matters is hardly surprising. Some chalk it up to her native British grit. Others may insist it's the kind of cool that spreads and clings to someone who's been deep into jazz music for more than 50 years.

McPartland's not only unflappable, she seems altogether unstoppable. Tomorrow night, she headlines a 90th birthday celebration show at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club Coca Cola overlooking Manhattan's Central Park. The sold-out tribute includes such guests as violinist Regina Carter, singer Karrin Allison and pianists Bill Charlap and Jason Moran.

"We were hoping to do it through the weekend," McPartland admits. "But I just couldn't make it work for five nights. So I think one is better. We'll just give them the whole works in one night and it'll still be fun."

The pelvis is better, thank you, but McPartland still doesn't get around as well as she used to because of arthritis in her legs. "But the main thing is having my hands so I can play," she says. "And I think I have all my marbles."

Proof that hands, head and heart are in good working order can be found on "Twilight World," her latest - and 21st - recording for the Concord Music label that she'd made in September with bassist Gary Mazzaroppi and drummer Glenn Davis. The album showcases McPartland's gift for lyric, near-elegiac melody in such original compositions as "In the Days of Our Love," "Stranger in a Dream" and the title track.

Yet she also shows her eclecticism with works by such composers as Johnny Mandel ("Close Enough for Love"), Burt Bacharach ("Alfie"), Miles Davis ("Blue in Green") and last year's Pulitzer Prize-winning insurrectionist Ornette Coleman ("Lonely Woman," "Turn Around"). "I've always admired his melodies," McPartland says of Coleman. "He's very high on my list of people I'd love to have on 'Piano Jazz.'"

A series of celebrities

McPartland is referring, of course, to the National Public Radio series due to celebrate its 30th birthday a year from now. Over three decades, "Piano Jazz's" cozy, laid-back blend of jam session and intimate conversation has allowed McPartland to engage in verbal and musical colloquies with such diverse artists as Rosemary Clooney, Cecil Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Mel Torme, Chick Corea, Tony Bennett, Keith Jarrett and Oscar Peterson.

"We've also had people who seem to be outside the jazz sphere like Bruce Hornsby, Walter Becker and Donald Fagin. ... Those last two, what are they called again? I can never remember their ... Steely Dan! That's right. I never can remember that name, even though I love those guys. I think they're wonderful."

When critics say that McPartland's playing has gained range, agility and depth as she's gotten older, they assume it's because of the sustained exposure "Piano Jazz" has given her to such a wide array of musical styles. They're not wrong, she says.

"I'm glad I'm not like Erroll Garner because we wouldn't have had a show," McPartland says. "He could only play one way. I have to play 10 or 12 different ways to keep up with whomever's on. But that's fun for me. It's always enjoyable." ("Piano Jazz," as with its host, has carried on, unperturbed and unhampered by housebound accident. "We had some in the can to use while I was recuperating and we've got two lined up for April.)

Absorbing music

From the very beginning of her musical life, McPartland has been easily able to absorb music. She learned to play piano mostly from listening to her mother play Chopin at home and seeking out the melodies and chords on her own. She received formal training at Guildhall School of Music in her native Great Britain when still in her teens, but the lure of jazz proved too strong to resist a gig playing in a four-piano vaudeville act. "My parents were horrified," she remembers. "But I was in show business now and that was that."

She still composes by ear. Last fall, just before her mishap, "A Portrait of Rachel Carson," McPartland's homage to the environmentalist crusader, was performed for the first time by the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra.

"I wrote it, but I didn't really write it," McPartland says. "I just improvised it on the piano and I gave what I'd done to a girl who's wonderful at transcribing. Then I gave the transcription to [pianist-composer] Alan Broadbent, who arranged it for orchestra just beautifully."

McPartland is hoping to record the piece soon. In the meantime, thinking back to the Manhattan nightclub where she made her reputation leading a trio in the 1950s, she reflects, "A symphonic piece about the environment dedicated to the author of 'Silent Spring.'

Now there's something that definitely wouldn't have occurred to me back at the Hickory Club."

Related topic galleries: Central Park, Coca-Cola Company, Ornette Coleman, Dave Brubeck, Rosemary Clooney, Burt Bacharach, Bruce Hornsby

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