by Sandra Beckmeier

A.D. Manion is one of the most reliable timekeepers of modern civilization. After spending his formative years as a drummer paying his dues in the Big Apple, in the Eighties he moved to Austin and became the city's most in-demand rhythm technician and drum stylist. Since then he has been a familiar and rock-solid presence in the Austin jazz community -- frequently playing live in local clubs as well as contributing his unique rhythmic stylization to recordings by Tony Campise, Martin Banks, James Polk, and others. His playing combines the swing technique of Philly Joe Jones with the hard-boiled intensity of Elvin Jones.

Influenced as much by the experimental harmolodic explorations of instrumentalists like Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers, and Ornette Coleman as she is by the vocal stylings of Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald, Tina Marsh's ascent to acceptance and accolades -- locally and nationally -- has been a rough and rocky road. Frustrated by the limitations of the stagnating jazz scene of the Seventies, Marsh founded the Creative Opportunity Orchestra in 1980. With this project, she created a uniquely avant-garde big band to provide support for her advanced studies in spatial relations and controlled communication. Her beautiful and distinctive soaring voice soon reached higher levels of purity with a band that always consists of Austin's best jazz players.

In their own ways, both A.D. Manion and Tina Marsh embody the spirit and legacy of jazz. While A.D. Manion continues the prestigious lineage of the great modern drummers (e.g. from Chick Webb to Kenny Clarke to Roy Haynes to Philly Joe Jones to Billy Higgins), Tina Marsh creates a new form of experimental and free music, a lineage that arguably begins with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and runs from Miles Davis to Ornette Coleman to Anthony Braxton and Cassandra Wilson. Each of these musicians has achieved success by remaining true to the spirit of experimentation and jazz.

This year's eighth annual Clarksville-West End Jazz and Arts Festival salutes the unflagging inspiration and the herculean efforts of A.D. Manion and Tina Marsh and proudly inducts these two living legends into the Clarksville Jazz Fest Hall of Fame. Please join us in celebrating the unique sounds and visions of two of Austin's living jazz legends.