Storyteller

Marilyn Crispell first became known as a sprinting free-jazz pianist with lyrical tendencies, but now the lyricism has taken over. The energy has been subsumed into calmer phrases, heavy with implication. What’s best about her growth over the past decade is that she has shed her outer mannerisms in favour of finding her inner pulse: her keyboard touch, her improvised melody shapes, the rhythms she naturally gravitates toward, feel as if they’re full of their own weight and shape. --Ben Ratcliff, The New York Times