Marc Copland

Marc Copland (/ˈkoʊplənd/, KOHP-lənd; born May 27, 1948, as Marc Cohen) is an American jazz pianist and composer.

Copland became part of the jazz scene in Philadelphia in the early 1960s as a saxophonist, and later moved to New York City, where he experimented with electric alto saxophone. In the early 1970s, while pursuing his own harmonic concept, he grew dissatisfied with what he felt were inherent limitations in the saxophone and moved to the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area, where he remained for a decade to retrain as a jazz pianist. He returned to New York in the mid-1980s. He has since become noted for his highly developed, colorful use of abstract harmony, often using unusual polychords and elements from atonal music. Mel Minter writes that Copland "excels at painting abstract sonic atmospheres".