Tina Marsh was a jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 vocalist and composer based in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

. Marsh was the creative director of the Creative Opportunity Orchestra (or CO2), a large jazz ensemble which she founded in 1980. In 2000, the Austin Chronicle

Austin Chronicle

The Austin Chronicle is an alternative weekly, tabloid-style newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demographic...

inducted Marsh into its Texas Music Hall of Fame. In 2008, the Austin Critics Table inducted Marsh into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame. C. Michael Bailey of All About Jazz

All About Jazz

All About Jazz is a leading jazz music website for enthusiasts and industry professionals based in Philadelphia in the United States.Founded by Michael Ricci in 1995, the Web-Site is maintained by a volunteer staff of writers, editors, and musicians, and provides coverage of all genres of jazz from...

has described Marsh's music as "progressive big band

Big band

A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...

, a kind of marriage between the avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 and postmodern

Postmodern music

Postmodern music is either simply music of the postmodern era, or music that follows aesthetical and philosophical trends of postmodernism. As the name suggests, the postmodernist movement formed partly in reaction to modernism...

 classical

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

. Marsh, like [Carla] Bley

Carla Bley

Carla Bley, née Borg, is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader. An important figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill , as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other...

, favors low brass

Brass instrument

A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...

 in assembly and solos. She uses her voice in a creative Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk

Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...

 sort of way that is not unattractive."

During the late-1970s, Marsh worked as an actor in musical theatre

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 in and around New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and Philadelphia. While living in New York, she began forming ideas about jazz singing. After moving to Austin, Marsh attended concerts by Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...

 and Sam Rivers

Sam Rivers

Samuel Carthorne Rivers , is an American jazz musician and composer. He performs on soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano....

 at Armadillo World Headquarters

Armadillo World Headquarters

The Armadillo World Headquarters was the premier music hall and entertainment center in Austin, Texas, United States from 1970 to 1980.-History:...

. These performances inspired her to form her first professional group, New Visions Ensemble, with Alex Coke

Alex Coke

Alex Coke is a jazz saxophonist and flutist. He graduated with his B.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1976. Before moving to Amsterdam in 1992, he was the recipient of many local awards. In the 1990s, Coke toured with the Dutch jazz ensemble the Willem Breuker Kollektief...

, Rock Savage, Booka Michel and Horatio Rodriguez.

In 1980, at the suggestion of Charlie Haden

Charlie Haden

Charles Edward Haden is an American jazz musician. He is a double bassist, probably best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman...

, Marsh studied at the Creative Music Studio

Creative Music Studio

The Creative Music Studio was a premier study center for contemporary creative music during the 1970s and 1980s, based in Woodstock, New York. Founded in 1971 by Karl Berger, Ingrid Sertso, and Ornette Coleman, it brought together leading innovators in the jazz and world music communities...

 in Woodstock, New York

Woodstock, New York

Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 at the 2000 census.The Town of Woodstock is in the northern part of the county...

. Upon returning to Austin, she formed the Creative Opportunity Orchestra with the members of New Visions Ensemble at its core. CO2 began as a cooperative

Cooperative

A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...

 organization, similar to the AACM

Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians is a non-profit organization, founded in Chicago, Illinois, United States, by pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran....

, though Marsh gradually assumed a managerial role and became the group's director.

Marsh and CO2 went on to perform with artists such as Carla Bley

Carla Bley

Carla Bley, née Borg, is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader. An important figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill , as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other...

, Hamiett Bluiett, Vinny Golia

Vinny Golia

Vinny Golia is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist specializing in woodwind instruments. He performs in the genres of contemporary music, jazz, free jazz, and free improvisation....

, Dennis González

Dennis González

Dennis González is a jazz musician, poet, visual artist and music educator based in Dallas, Texas....

, Billy Hart

Billy Hart

William "Billy" Hart is a jazz drummer and educator who has performed with some of the most important jazz musicians in history.-Biography:Early on Hart performed in Washington, D.C...

, Roscoe Mitchell

Roscoe Mitchell

Roscoe Mitchell is an African American composer, jazz instrumentalist and educator, mostly known for being "a technically superb—if idiosyncratic—saxophonist." He has been called "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz who has been "at the forefront of modern music" for the past...

, Steve Swallow

Steve Swallow

Steve Swallow is a jazz double bass and bass guitarist and composer born in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.One of the leading bassists in jazz, Swallow is noted for collaborations with Jimmy Giuffre, Gary Burton and Carla Bley...

, and Kenny Wheeler

Kenny Wheeler

Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, OC is a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. since the 1950s....

. Marsh and the ensemble regularly performed at the Laguna Gloria

Laguna Gloria

Laguna Gloria is the former home of Clara Driscoll and site of a 1916 Italianate-style villa on the shores of Lake Austin in Austin, Texas. It was the original home of the Austin Museum of Art and still houses some of its collections...

 lakeside amphitheater in Austin. Marsh was a participant in the Austin Jazz Workshop

Austin Jazz Workshop

The Austin Jazz Workshop is a nonprofit group of professional musicians dedicated to jazz performance in central Texas public schools. Founded in 1994, the group performs over one hundred shows for an estimated 35,000 children each season....

.

In 1994, Marsh was diagnosed with, and treated for, breast cancer. In February 2008, Marsh learned that the cancer had returned and metastasized

Metastasis

Metastasis, or metastatic disease , is the spread of a disease from one organ or part to another non-adjacent organ or part. It was previously thought that only malignant tumor cells and infections have the capacity to metastasize; however, this is being reconsidered due to new research...

, though she continued to record and perform later in the year. Marsh died on June 16, 2009. She had continued to perform up to two months prior to her death.