Shall We Play That One Together?: The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland, with a New Preface - Paperback

by Paul de Barros (Author)

The life of the unparalleled purveyor of the Great American Songbook, Marian McPartland, is celebrated in this engrossing biography

From Bobby Short to Esperanza Spalding, across the 33-year run of the acclaimed radio show Piano Jazz, Marian McPartland conversed and played piano duets with jazz greats and, via National Public Radio syndication, brought the best of jazz standards to listeners. In Shall We Play That One Together?, Paul de Barros considers McPartland's full life and shows her to have been a courageous compositional innovator as well as an immensely talented popularizer and educator. Her standing among jazz artists and her advocacy for women jazz musicians made McPartland a natural to host Piano Jazz show, conceived in 1978, and first broadcast on WLTR out of Columbia, South Carolina, in 1979. That show secured her reputation in the musical form and allowed her to introduce American and then global audiences to a diverse array of musicians developing the Great American Songbook.

Author Biography

Paul de Barros is an award-winning jazz critic and the author of Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle. He has written for DownBeat and The Seattle Times since 1982.