Jazz great McPartland ‘discovers’ student pianist

By Scott Hauser

Siskind

s brushes with fame go, pianist Jeremy Siskind ’08E gave little thought to his encounter with Marian McPartland when he first met the jazz great at the Eastman School last winter.

Siskind, a student of piano professor Harold Danko, was helping the Eastman Jazz Ensemble rehearse for a February concert celebrating Rayburn Wright ’43E, the founder of Eastman’s jazz program.

McPartland, the host of the nationally syndicated NPR program Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz and a longtime friend of Wright, had been invited to perform with the ensemble.

As Siskind ran through the charts for Wright’s arrangement of the Cole Porter standard “From This Moment On,” McPartland listened in.

A few days later, Siskind had a voice mail message. Would he, McPartland wondered, be able to join her in New York City to tape an installment of her celebrated show?

For an up-and-coming jazz musician, it’s the kind of message you dream about.

“She’s certainly a supporter of young musicians,” Siskind says. “I’m very honored to have this kind of opportunity.”

The rest of the jazz world can listen in as Siskind and McPartland play and talk about music when the episode airs on NPR this month. The show, which airs at 8 p.m. on Saturdays, is scheduled to be released to stations for broadcast between December 5 and December 19 on 259 radio stations, including Rochester’s own WXXI-FM.

Shari Hutchinson, producer of the show, says McPartland tries to highlight the talents of young jazz musicians.

“He’s not the youngest we’ve ever had on the program, but he certainly caught Marian’s attention at Eastman,” Hutchinson says. “When she heard him play, she knew she had to have him on the program.”

Siskind and McPartland taped about 3-and-a-half hours of material to create the one-hour show, but Siskind says the host put him at ease immediately.

“Once we got there, it was very low stress,” he says.

At Eastman, he teams up with bassist Jesse Breheney ’08E and drummer Dave Tedeschi ’08E as the Jeremy Siskind Trio, a group that plans to release its first CD of Siskind originals this fall.

Growing up in Irvine, California, Siskind started playing piano when he was 4 or 5 years old. By middle school, he had switched to jazz.

“I’ve always been an improviser,” he says.

For Danko, seeing a talented musician like Siskind have the opportunity to be featured on the McPartland show is especially gratifying because McPartland would not have found Siskind if he had not been studying at Eastman.

He says many young jazz artists think the best way to get that kind of attention is to forgo music school and pound the pavement in the hopes of landing increasingly prominent bookings.

“She became aware of his talent when she heard him playing in a very natural way, which was cool,” Danko says.