Love Quote by Marian McPartland

McPartland is quietly rebelling against the tyranny of “easy keys” and, by extension, the assumptions baked into how jazz gets taught, sold, and casually consumed. B and F sharp aren’t just exotic choices; they’re social signals. They tell you she’s listening for color over convenience, and she’s willing to make her hands, her bandmates, and the room work a little harder to get it.

The line about “better resonance or something” is classic musician understatement, a shrug that hides a lifetime of precision. On a piano, every key is technically the same instrument, yet each register and voicing interacts differently with the instrument’s tuning, the room, and the player’s touch. Saying some keys “resonate” better is less mystical than it sounds: certain tonal centers invite particular chord shapes, tensions, and melodic contours. They push you into different habits. That’s the real subtext: keys are not neutral. They script your muscle memory.

Her dismissal of F and C reads like a refusal to default settings. Those are the keys of beginners, of “standard” arrangements, of jam-session autopilot. Avoiding them is a way to dodge cliché before it happens, to force freshness through constraint. In the broader context of McPartland’s career - a serious improviser navigating a scene that often patronized women as tasteful entertainers - this is also identity work. She’s staking out agency in the smallest, most technical place: the choice of where the music starts.