Marilyn Mazur

Photo by Gunnar Hovgård

Marilyn Mazur (born January 18, 1955) is a percussionist, drummer, composer, vocalist, pianist, dancer and bandleader. She was born in New York and has lived in Denmark from age six. She is of Polish and African-American descent. Since 1975, she has worked as a percussionist with various groups, among them Six Winds with Alex Riel. Mazur is primarily an autodidact, but she has a degree in percussion from the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

She has worked with many musicians: John Tchicai, Pierre Dørge (New Jungle Orchestra), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Palle Mikkelborg, Arild Andersen, Eberhard Weber, Peter Kowald, Jeanne Lee, Jan Garbarek, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Gil Evans, to mention a few.

In 1989, she founded her band Future Song, with pianist Elvira Plenar, singer Aina Kemanis, trumpet player Nils Petter Molvær, her husband Klavs Hovman (bass) and Audun Kleive, as second drummer. In a second project, Percussion Paradise, she works regularly with percussionists Benita Haastrup, Lisbeth Diers and Birgit Løkke.

The U.S. magazine Down Beat, in 1989, 1990 and 1995, selected Mazur as a "percussion-talent deserving wider recognition". In 2001, she was awarded the Jazzpar Prize, the world's largest international jazz prize.

Discography

• Future Song (1992)
• Small Labyrinths (1997)
• All the Birds (2002)
• Daylight Stories (2004)
• Elixir (2008)
• Tangled Temptations & The Magic Box (2010)

With Jan Garbarek

• Twelve Moons (ECM, 1992)
• Visible World (ECM, 1995)
• Rites (ECM, 1998)

Sources

• JAZZPAR

External links

• Marilyn Mazur's official website
• Marilyn Mazur on Europe Jazz Network
• Marilyn Mazur on JAZZPAR Artists

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Name	Mazur, Marilyn
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Date of birth	January 18, 1955
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