Marc Copland - Early Years

Early Years

Copland began taking piano lessons at age seven, but stopped abruptly at the age of ten when his public school offered the option of saxophone training. Beginning his career on alto sax, Copland became part of a vibrant music scene in his hometown in the early 1960s, learning and playing with Michael Brecker, a close friend and fellow high school student. In 1965 he briefly studied harmony with Romeo Cascarino in Philadelphia and also began training in composition with Meyer Kupferman and studied saxophone with Joseph Allard, both in New York.

In 1966, Copland moved to New York City where he attended Columbia University. He became part of a late 1960s and early 1970s New York jazz scene that expanded from the traditional clubs into lofts around the city. During this period, Copland was, along with John Abercrombie and Glen Moore, a member of the Chico Hamilton Quartet. He experimented by adding electronic processors to his alto, culminating in the recording of Friends, an electric jazz album produced by a small New York City start-up label, Oblivion Records. This album, with Abercrombie, Clint Houston, and Jeff Williams, achieved a kind of cult status, earning a five-star review in Down Beat magazine.

Increasingly, however, Copland was writing music with more complex chords that suggested to him an approach to music very different from his acoustic and electronic saxophone work. He came to feel that as an instrument, the saxophone was not a suitable vehicle to fully express his musical imagination. By 1973, he had decided to switch to piano.

For the next decade, Copland labored in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore in relative obscurity while mastering his new instrument. During this period he underwent a kind of apprenticeship, playing with well-known musicians passing through the area who asked for him as an accompanist. Backing up different musicians one week to the next, he worked with artists such as Randy Brecker, Bob Berg, Hank Crawford, Art Farmer, Curtis Fuller, Tom Harrell, Eddie Harris, Harold Land and Blue Mitchell, Dave Liebman, Bob Mintzer, Gary Peacock, and Sonny Stitt. During this time he also led his own bands in local clubs, playing with many of the musicians who lived and worked in the area. One of these, bassist Drew Gress, later moved to New York and over the years has become one of Copland's chief musical collaborators.