Canadian creative improvising and modern jazz pianist Marianne Trudel was born near Quebec City in Saint-Michel-de-Bellechasse on July 28, 1977. Her parents were listening to Francophone songwriters from Quebec and classical music, and a female babysitter played French-Canadian folkloric songs on the piano by ear when Trudel was a toddler. Trudel studied in the mid-'90s at the Cégep de St. Laurent college prep program with Lorraine Desmarais and Michèle Royer, and then headed off to college, earning a B.A. in jazz performance from McGill University in 2001, studying with Jan Jarczyck. She earned her master's degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Montréal in 2006, and two supplemental degrees in jazz arranging and classical piano. Trudel attended the Banff Centre for the Arts in the winter of 2002 and spring of 2000, 2004, and 2006; the Vancouver Creative Music Institute in the summer of 2005; and the Henry Mancini Institute in Los Angeles in 2006. She established the Au Cœur des Musiques Improvisées, a series of concert-conferences, which included artists in residence Malcolm Goldstein, Jean Derome, Michel Lambert, Robert Marcel Lepage, Martin Tétreault, and Bernard Falaise. Artists with whom she has collaborated or studied include Charles Aznavour, Chucho Valdés, George Lewis, Mark Dresser, Lori Freedman, Ron DiLauro, Piotr Michalowski, Muhal Richard Abrams, Evan Parker, Dylan van der Schyff, Jean Derome, Kenny Wheeler, François Houle, John Korsrud, Dave Douglas, Han Bennink, Joey Baron, Joe Lovano, Mark Feldman, and Paul Rucker. An interest in tango music had her studying accordion with Juan Carlos Caceres. In Montreal, she has worked with Jim Doxas, Chet Doxas, Morgan Moore, Normand Guilbeault, Jonathan Stewart, and Lévy Bourbonnais. She has composed commissioned music for the ensemble of Bernard Primeau, the Altsys, Hugh Fraser, the McGill and University of Montreal big bands, and Oktoecho. Trudel has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and is the 2007 recipient of the Prix Étoiles Galaxie de Radio-Canada for the composition "Sur la Route," played at the Montreal Jazz Festival. She returned to the Cégep de St. Laurent, teaching jazz harmony, piano, and arranging, and works with the Suddenly Dance Theater. ~ Michael G. Nastos