RiP Marilyn Mazur

It is sometimes said that elderly people in poor health will not survive the winter.

Marilyn Mazur did not wait for the arrival of winter 2025/2026 to leave us on December 12 at the age of 70. As this major drummer and percussionist was not well known to the French public, it is worth sketching a brief portrait of her to highlight her originality.

Perhaps we can start with a fact that particularly sets her apart: she is the only woman to have been part of a Miles Davis band, with whom she remained for several years in the mid-1980s, recording the album “Aura” with the trumpeter.

She is also the second woman and the only Dane to have won the Jazzpar Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of jazz, which was awarded to her in 2001 in Copenhagen.

This shows that Marilyn Mazur was recognized as an exceptional instrumentalist for the colorful and polyrhythmic quality of her playing, both in her home country (she moved there at the age of six after being born in New York) and abroad, where she was recruited as a sidewoman by leaders of the caliber of Wayne Shorter and Jan Garbarek—whom she accompanied for many years, including in duos. In Denmark, she began her career with groups such as guitarist Pierre Dørge’s New Jungle Orchestra and saxophonist John Tchicai.

But she quickly founded her own groups, including all-female ensembles such as Primi Band and later Shamania, which brought together ten instrumentalists and singers. She thus became one of the major figures on the Danish jazz scene, where she was unanimously respected. She was also very active on the European scene, having collaborated with musicians as diverse as John Taylor and Norma Winstone from the UK, Bobo Stenson, Nils-Petter Molvaer, and Arild Andersen from Scandinavia, Rita Marcotulli from Italy, Peter Kowald and Eberhard Weber from Germany or Jean-Michel Pilc from France.

I personally had the opportunity to hear and see her in concert on several occasions at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, where she was a regular guest, and I was able to appreciate her qualities as a leader and her infectious energy.

She had a flair for staging linked to her training as a dancer, alongside her studies in classical percussion, and her shows always had a fascinating visual aspect—if only because of the imposing size of her percussion set, from which she drew the most diverse sounds and rhythms—which made her one of the Danish public’s favorite artists.

So, it is not only a remarkable drummer and percussionist who has passed away, but also an award-winning composer and conductor with an engaging personality, whom it is not too late to discover on record or DVD now that she can no longer delight us on stage.