NEW YORK — When she talks about falling down at home, she makes it seem such a trifle that she passes by the details, save for the important one: “I fractured my pelvis,” Marian McPartland said, adding, as if she just remembered something else, “like a jerk. It was about two weeks before Christmas. You can’t do anything for it except sit around and wait until you get better.”
McPartland — pianist, composer, author and radio host — turns 90 today. When you’re entering your 10th decade, a pelvis injury sounds calamitous. And yet, if you know McPartland, the stoicism, humor and grace she conveys over the phone while talking about such matters is hardly surprising. Some chalk it up to her native British grit. Others may insist it’s the kind of cool that spreads and clings to someone who’s been deep into jazz music for more than 50 years.
McPartland is not only unflappable, she seems altogether unstoppable. Wednesday night, she headlined a sold-out 90th birthday celebration show at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park.
The pelvis is better, thank you, but McPartland still doesn’t get around as well as she used to, because of arthritis in her legs.
“But the main thing is having my hands so I can play,” she said. “And I think I have all my marbles.”
Proof that hands, head and heart are in good working order can be found on “Twilight World,” her latest recording for the Concord Music label that she made in September with bassist Gary Mazzaroppi and drummer Glenn Davis. The album showcases McPartland’s gift for lyric, near-elegiac melody in such original compositions as “In the Days of Our Love,” “Stranger in a Dream” and the title track.
Yet she also shows her eclecticism with works by such composers as Johnny Mandel (“Close Enough for Love”), Burt Bacharach (“Alfie”), Miles Davis (“Blue in Green”) and last year’s Pulitzer Prize-winner Ornette Coleman (“Lonely Woman,” “Turn Around”). “I’ve always admired his melodies,” McPartland said of Coleman. “He’s very high on my list of people I’d love to have on ‘Piano Jazz.’ ”
She is referring to the National Public Radio series due to celebrate its 30th birthday in a year. Over three decades, “Piano Jazz’s” cozy, laid-back blend of jam session and intimate conversation has allowed McPartland to engage in verbal and musical colloquies with such diverse artists as Rosemary Clooney, Cecil Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Mel Torme, Chick Corea, Tony Bennett, Keith Jarrett and Oscar Peterson.
“We’ve also had people who seem to be outside the jazz sphere like Bruce Hornsby, Walter Becker and Donald Fagin. … Those last two, what are they called again? I can never remember their … Steely Dan! That’s right. I never can remember that name, even though I love those guys. I think they’re wonderful.”
From the beginning of her musical life, McPartland has been easily able to absorb music. She learned to play piano mostly from listening to her mother play Chopin at home and seeking out the melodies and chords on her own. As a teenager, she received formal training at Guildhall School of Music in her native Great Britain, but the lure of jazz proved too strong to resist a gig playing in a four-piano vaudeville act.
“My parents were horrified,” she remembered. “But I was in show business now, and that was that.”
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