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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > June > 16 > Entry
Remembering Tina Marsh
Tina Marsh — bandleader, vocalist, composer, dreamer, founder of the Creative Opportunity Orchestra — was the creative beacon of the Austin jazz scene for the past 30 years. Her music and her life were defined by the breadth of her artistic curiosity and depth of her compassion.
“Creativity poured out of her like the scent of honeysuckle. It came naturally,” said Val Marsh, Tina’s younger sister, during the last days of the singer’s life. “She pushed the envelope, pushed us all to see the beauty around us, to experience the moment in a way that is deep and knowing and peaceful.”
Marsh died of cancer Tuesday at her Austin home, where she spent her last days surrounded by family and friends, collaborators and admirers, whose lives were touched by her fanciful spirit as well as the themes of peace and possibility, humanity and transcendence, expressed through her art. She was 55.
As the leader of the Creative Opportunity Orchestra, Marsh was the champion of eclectic big-band jazz that often ventured into the avant-garde. The band’s most acclaimed recordings — such as “Migration” or “The Heaven Line” — were nowhere close to commercial successes. But what set the orchestra apart was its sense of daring, the social and spiritual undercurrents, and an emphasis on community.
Marsh’s creative interests were not confined to the Creative Opportunity Orchestra, however. She created, arranged and performed music for the choreographer Sally Jacques; recorded an intimate solo album of arias, ballads and standards; and staged an eclectic annual jazz series. She also conceived a popular multidenominational holiday program of music and culture called “Circle of Light” — which has been performed in Austin schools for more than 10 years and involves dozens of Austin musicians.
As she demonstrated in her treatment of a song such as Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman,” Marsh was in equal measure a “vocalist” and “singer.” She could scat, but her wordless vocal lines were more sophisticated than that. Marsh used her voice as an instrument to convey literal effects — the coo of birds, the flutter of wings — and in other contexts approximate the figurative: turbulence, vastness or longing.
Marsh was born in Annapolis, Md., and raised in a military family. After seeking her fortune in New York, Marsh “discovered” the beauty of jazz following her move to Austin in the late 1970s and never turned her gaze from it again. She is survived by her mother, Dorothy Marsh; her sister, Val Marsh; and two sons, Clay and Zeke Zimmerman.
“I’m no expert,” Val Marsh said. “But when I sing and reach a pure note, I feel as close to God as I can get. And I know Tina was doing that all the time. It was like her constant prayer or chant or meditation. But beyond that, she had the genius and capacity to carry an audience with her.”
Photo by Mark Matson FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
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By Julie Christensen
June 17, 2009 10:38 AM | Link to this
Oh, I’m so sad to hear of her illness and passing! She was a treasure. My condolences to her family and many friends.
By Joe Castleman
June 17, 2009 11:34 AM | Link to this
I’m very sorry to hear about this.
I was involved with the recording of “The Heaven Line” (albeit in a very minor role). “Cloud on Cloud” in particular made a lasting impression on me, and I will always treasure, and be grateful for, the entire experience.
Thank you for the music.
By Carl Michel
June 17, 2009 11:55 AM | Link to this
My thoughts and prayers go out to Tina’s family, friends and fellow musicians/co-horts. Tina was a sparker!
By ellen
June 17, 2009 3:14 PM | Link to this
I am so so sorry. Tina was a wonderful person.
By Amie Maciszewski
June 17, 2009 5:25 PM | Link to this
My sincerest respects and condolences to Tina’s family. I had great admiration and respect for Tina and had the opportunity to work with her and Sally Jacques in the 2000 Bodycount performance at Barton Springs. We’ll miss her very much!
By Mia Carter
June 17, 2009 9:26 PM | Link to this
My profound condolences to all of Tina’s family, far and wide, and all of the artists who were blessed to collaborate with her. My deepest sympathies to Zeke and Clay. Tina’s voice will remain with everyone who ever heard her sing; I will forever remember the show at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden when she sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” and moved people to tears with her exquisite rendition. The concert took place during a very dark period—the Iraq War, political despair—and Tina filled the place and our spirits with light and brave hope, in spite of it all. Tina Marsh was a true artist and a giver of the first order. She lives in her art and all of her many, many good deeds. Tina, I will miss you—I am stricken from afar as I hear this news. You will be missed. Your neighbor and friend, Mia.
By Rocky Boschert
June 17, 2009 11:41 PM | Link to this
Tina Marsh was the consummate jazz singer. She studied and absorbed numerous jazz vocal styles and then re-expressed them through a new and higher voice. When I heard her sing for the first time at a benefit for herself last year in Austin, I became an immediate fan. She had even incorporated the jazz yodel styling of Leon Thomas, a rare singer whom many jazz musicians don’t even know about. Having been a jazz radio announcer for 20 years and having seen and heard some of the best jazz artists in the world, I knew she had “it” — that rare improvisational intuition that only the best jazz spirits embody. Her family was able to love and share life with a true talent. Not may of us have that chance. We were all lucky to experience her life and talent.
By Beverly Spicer
June 17, 2009 11:50 PM | Link to this
The news has found me in Virginia. I am so very sad to think of our lives without Tina……..A loss to a very loving and wonderful community of friends who care deeply about one another…….
By Steve Smith
June 18, 2009 2:31 PM | Link to this
Terrible news. Becoming acquainted with Tina’s music while attending college in San Antonio during the late ’80s was a crucial step in my artistic development, literally opening vast new spaces to me. Wish now more than ever that I’d been able to hear one of her more recent performances here in NYC. Condolences to her friends, family and admirers.
By James Retherford
June 18, 2009 3:11 PM | Link to this
I worked with Tina as graphic designer for the Creative Opportunity Orchestra from the beginning in 1980 for the next dozen years or so. The pay wasn’t good, but the overall artist rewards were stupendous.
Tina’s transcendent musicianship and vocality were sublime crossing into scary, emerging from a place so deep, mysterious, and evocative one could not help but wonder whether she, like Sun Ra, another musical adventurer who visited and left this planet before her, had come from another world, another another plane of aural reality.
Her message of peace, love, and community belies a career fraught with struggle, setbacks, and disappointments, both professionally and personally. A dedicated jazz performer in Austin, Texas, as I learned after a recent candid conversation with Tina’s longtime friend and collaborator Alex Coke, is always about one extended illness or a couple cancelled gigs from homelessness. Tina’s own hardships seemed to give her musical voice more urgency, more authenticity.
I have some of Tina’s work in analog format, with album covers I helped design. I have a CD of Alex’s Amsterdam-recorded masterwork, “New Texas Swing,” showcasing Tina at the top of her form. Alex and Tina are backed by a brilliant international rhythm section featuring Willem Breuker Kollektief bass player Arjen Gorter and former Steve Lacy drummer John Betsch.
The AAS notice did not mention that Tina started and ran, for a number of years, an extraordinary all-volunteer music program at South Austin’s Becker Elementary, where her two sons, Clay and Diamond Zeke, attended grade school. She was very excited about working with children, as is evidenced in the labor of love that became Circle of Light.
While Tina’s voice is irreplaceable, let her work and her indomitable spirit prevail.
Peace, love, and community.
jr
By Lynda Lieberman Baker
June 19, 2009 8:12 AM | Link to this
Tina gave so so much and touched so so many. Her spirit lives on in many of us. My deepest condolences to her family. She was a gift.
By Mac and Joyce Payne
June 19, 2009 7:05 PM | Link to this
Tina Marsh was a friend. Those who had Tina as a friend were truly blessed. She was a joy and an inspiration for us all. I often said, she was the most creative person I knew and she pushed that creativity to its limits. We will all miss that creative spirit and drive, but most of all we will miss Tina.
By Ariana Vincent
June 21, 2009 3:13 AM | Link to this
A Song for Lady Tina
Song Catcher Light Beamer Radiant Soul
Celestial notes from her incredible human instrument echo in the halls of jazz And in the hearts of those who admired and adored her luminous spirit Throwin’ down scat like a string of brilliant star pearls shining in the heavens
Tina IS our string of pearls She IS our celestial note She IS forever in our hearts our song catching light beaming radiant mama tapping out a beat through all eternity.
Shoo-be-doo-be-doo-***, scat-a-tat-tat Tina!
Written in memoriam for Tina Marsh June 20, 2009 by Ariana Vincent, Austin