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Tina Marsh
Tina Marsh (January 18, 1954 -June 16, 2009 was a jazz vocalist and composer based in Austin, Texas. Marsh was the creative director of the Creative Opportunity Orchestra (or CO2), a large jazz ensemble which she founded in 1980. Marsh was born in Annapolis, Maryland. During the late-1970s, she worked as an actor in musical theatre in and around New York City and Philadelphia. While living in New York, she began forming ideas about jazz singing. After moving to Austin, Marsh attended concerts by Anthony Braxton and Sam Rivers at Armadillo World Headquarters. These performances inspired her to form her first professional group, New Visions Ensemble, with Alex Coke, Rock Savage, Booka Michel and Horatio Rodriguez. At the suggestion of Charlie Haden, Marsh studied at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York. Upon returning to Austin, she formed the Creative Opportunity Orchestra with the members of New Visions Ensemble at its core. CO2 began as a cooperative organization, similar to the AACM, though Marsh gradually assumed a managerial role and became the group's director. Marsh and CO2 went on to perform with artists such as Carla Bley, Hamiett Bluiett, Vinny Golia, Dennis González, Billy Hart, Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Swallow, and Kenny Wheeler. Marsh and the ensemble regularly performed at the Laguna Gloria lakeside amphitheater in Austin. Marsh was also a participant in the Austin Jazz Workshop. In 2000, the Austin Chronicle inducted Marsh into its Texas Music Hall of Fame. In 2008, the Austin Critics Table inducted Marsh into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame.C. Michael Bailey of All About Jazz has described Marsh's music as "progressive big band, a kind of marriage between the avant-garde and postmodern classical. Marsh, like [Carla] Bley, favors low brass in assembly and solos. She uses her voice in a creative Meredith Monk sort of way that is not unattractive." In 1994, Marsh was diagnosed with, and treated for, breast cancer. In February 2008, Marsh learned that the cancer had returned and though she continued to record and perform, Tina Marsh died on June 16, 2009. The Austin History Center in Austin, Texas maintains a collection of Marsh's papers.
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Alex Coke/Tina Marsh/Steve Feld: It's Possible
by Elliott Simon
With the passing of Tina Marsh this past June (2009), the Creative Opportunity Orchestra or CO2 for short, lost its earthly voice and artistic visionary. While her CO2 is grand in scope, it most recently spawned this intimate meeting of her extraordinary voice, tenor saxophonist/flutist Alex Coke and Steven Feld who plays ashiwa, an African bass rhythm box. Marsh is in superb form here and her voice thrills, especially in the higher registers, as it dovetails beautifully ...
read moreTina Marsh and the Creative Opportunity Orchestra (CO2): The Heaven Line / World Wide
by C. Michael Bailey
Much in the same way that the finest classical composers of the 20th Century have been Russian, some of the finest big band leaders and arrangers of the last 50 years have been women. There is plenty of evidence to back up this statement. I submit: Mary Lou Williams, Maria Schneider, Carla Bley, Toshiko Akyoshi, Melba Liston.... Risking sexism, I find the compositions, arrangements and performances by women directed big bands to be more carefully thoughtful than that of their ...
read moreTina Marsh, Austin's Avant-Jazz Leader, Gravely Ill
Source:
Jazz Beyond Jazz by Howard Mandel
The founder of the Creative Opportunity Orchestra, a musicans' cooperative of composer-improvisers on the model of Chicago's AACM, is suffering late stage breast cancer. Beautiful Tina Marsh, age 55, whose disease was successfully treated in the '90s but recurred in 2008, is resting in a private home, with friends close by. A pure-voiced vocalist who employs extended techniques in dramatic interpretations of songs such as Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman" with brilliant control for deep affect but who has also ...
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Tina Marsh & the Creative Opportunity Orchestra (CO2) CB's 313 Gallery Nov. 7th 10:30pm
Source:
All About Jazz
CreOp presents Tina Marsh & the Creative Opportunity Orchestra (CO2) This special New York concert will premiere a new composition by Artistic Director Tina Marsh, Courage of the Butterfly," commissioned through the Chamber Music America (CMA) New Works/Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Jazz Ensembles Project. This esteemed national award is presented to only a few jazz-based composers annually. CB's 313 GALLERY (313 Bowery) November 7th, 2004 10:30pm This uncompromising ensemble features Marsh's vocals and she evidently can ...
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