Biography

Marilyn Mazur (born 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. From 1975 she has worked as percussionist with various groups, among others the group Six Winds with Alex Riel. Mazur is primarily autodidact, but she has taken a degree in percussion at the Royal Danish Conservatory.

Mazur 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, 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 Hovmann (bass), and Audun Kleive as second drummer. In a second project Percussion Paradise she is working 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 with the “Jazzpar prize”, the world’s largest international jazz prize.

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