Linda Ronstadt - The Piano Jazz Special (2023)

Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, has been a select venue for music concerts since 1858. Promoters bring classical, jazz, folk, country, popular, contemporary, and world music concerts to the Great Hall and Washburn Hall. The Great Hall can seat 1,300 and Washburn Hall 300; both halls offer the “Mechanics Hall experience”, an intimate musical atmosphere that satisfies performers and patrons with unmatched quality of sound and connection with each other. On April 10th, 2005, the legend that is Linda Ronstadt performed a session at Mechanics Hall, alongside pianists Marian McPartland and Alan Broadbent. Marian McPartland (1918 – 2013) was an English–American jazz pianist, composer, and writer. She was the host of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on National Public Radio, from 1978 to 2011. Alan Broadbent is a New Zealand jazz pianist, arranger, and composer known for his work with artists such as Sue Raney, Charlie Haden, Woody Herman, Chet Baker, Irene Kral, Sheila Jordan, Natalie Cole, Warne Marsh, Bud Shank, and many others. The show the parties performed consisted of a fine selection of jazz and Broadway standards, from composers as esteemed as Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Sammy Kahn and a special instrumental composition by McPartland herself, entitled ‘Portrait Of Linda Ronstadt’, a gorgeous tribute to an esteemed vocalist, already by this time suffering the early signs of the health problems that have affected her ever since. With plenty of between song chit-chat between Maria and Linda too, which embellishes the performance even further, all at once these varied components make for a scintillating concert.