''Piano Jazz'' is a weekly one-hour radio show produced and distributed by

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

(NPR). It began on June 4, 1978, and was hosted by

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

Marian McPartland Margaret Marian McPartland OBE ( Turner;Hasson, Claire"Marian McPartland: Jazz Pianist: An Overview of a Career" PhD Thesis. Retrieved 12 August 2008. 20 March 1918 – 20 August 2013), was an English–American jazz pianist, composer, and wri ...

(1918–2013) until 2011. It is the longest-running cultural program on NPR. The show generally features a single guest (though small groups and duos are also featured at times), and usually consists of about an equal mixture of discussion and playing, often duets with McPartland. Initially the guests were limited to jazz pianists, but the format was later expanded to include performers on other instruments as well as other genres (though the performances remain focused on jazz tunes). The show provides an inside look at the relationships of

musicians, since McPartland often had long friendships with many of her guests. ''Piano Jazz'' won a

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...

in 1983. The show is an exclusive production of South Carolina public radio on

WLTR WLTR (91.3 MHz) is a noncommercial public FM radio station in Columbia, South Carolina, United States. The station features a news and information radio format with programs from National Public Radio, as well as classical and other genres of mu ...

and is offered nationally by NPR. A number of shows have been released commercially on CD or LP, including shows with

Dizzy Gillespie John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy Eldridge but a ...

Bill Evans William John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer who worked primarily as the leader of his trio. His use of impressionist harmony, interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block ch ...

Bruce Hornsby Bruce Randall Hornsby (born November 23, 1954) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. His music draws from folk rock, jazz, bluegrass, folk, Southern rock, country rock, jam band, rock, heartland rock, and blues rock musical traditions ...

Mary Lou Williams Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, an ...

Shirley Horn Shirley Valerie Horn (May 1, 1934 – October 20, 2005) was an American jazz singer and pianist. She collaborated with many jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Toots Thielemans, Ron Carter, Carmen McRae, Wynton Marsalis and othe ...

Steely Dan Steely Dan is an American rock band founded in 1971 in New York by Walter Becker (guitars, bass, backing vocals) and Donald Fagen (keyboards, lead vocals). Initially the band had a stable lineup, but in 1974, Becker and Fagen retired from liv ...

Milt Hinton,

Kenny Burrell Kenneth Earl Burrell (born July 31, 1931) is an American jazz guitarist known for his work on numerous top jazz labels: Prestige, Blue Note, Verve, CTI, Muse, and Concord. His collaborations with Jimmy Smith were notable, and produced the 1965 ...

Lionel Hampton Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles ...

and

Les McCann Leslie Coleman McCann (born September 23, 1935) is an American jazz pianist and vocalist.Feather, Leonard, and Ira Gitler (2007), ''The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz'', p. 448. Oxford University Press. Early life Les McCann was born in ...

. These were released on The Jazz Alliance, a subsidiary of

Concord Records Concord Records is an American record label owned by Concord and based in Los Angeles, California. Concord Records was launched in 1995 as an imprint designed to reach beyond the company's foundational Concord Jazz label. The label's artists have ...

founded around 1990 for this purpose. On November 10, 2011, NPR announced the retirement of Marian McPartland from the program. Jon Weber stepped into McPartland's shoes, recording 13 episodes for the renamed ''Piano Jazz Rising Stars'', broadcast in early 2012 and 2013. It features mainly young musicians such as Whitney James, Jason Moran, Taylor Eigsti and

Grace Kelly Grace Patricia Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982) was an American actress who, after starring in several significant films in the early to mid-1950s, became Princess of Monaco by marrying Prince Rainier III in April 1956. Kelly ...

. McPartland's ''Piano Jazz'' continues as a series of rebroadcasts of old programs, with ''Piano Jazz Rising Stars'' becoming a separate program.

Program log: guest list

(This is a list of recording dates in year-month-day format for the sessions listed; when the exact date is unknown, 00 is used as a placeholder)

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Date unknown

References

External links

The Sweet and Lovely Legacy of Marian McPartland
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''Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz'' via streaming audio
{{NPR American jazz radio programs NPR programs Peabody Award-winning radio programs 1970s American radio programs 1980s American radio programs 1990s American radio programs 2000s American radio programs 2010s American radio programs Works about pianos and pianists 1978 radio programme debuts