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Nicola Benedetti Performs Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto in LA Phil Premiere
Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis’s new “Concerto in D” for violin is a brainstorm from a genius brain, but it’s a storm that may yet need more taming. The piece was written for Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, who performed it with enthusiasm and stunning technique at her Los Angeles Philharmonic debut Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl, with Cristian Macelaru conducting. Keep reading »
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The short and the long of the American conversation in Wynton Marsalis’ Concerto in D at the Bowl
Every election year is about competing visions of America and what it means to be an American. Political parties this summer are particularly divided between and among themselves. The Hollywood Bowl, however, has offered to help with the vision thing. Keep reading »
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Benedetti, CSO give Marsalis premiere impassioned advocacy at Ravinia
It’s a sign of the times that even at a summer escape destination like the Ravinia Festival audience members now get wanded by security as they enter the park. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis’ “Concerto in D” revels in Americana
Wynton Marsalis long ago established his fluency in multiple musical languages, jazz and classical chief among them. But blues, gospel, spirituals, tango, African chant and other idioms also course through Marsalis’ large works, such as the symphonic-choral “All Rise,” the sanctified “In This House, On This Morning” and the vocal-orchestral epic “Blood on the Fields” (the first jazz composition to win a Pulitzer Prize, in 1997). Keep reading »
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Jazzfest review: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in Ottawa
On a day when the leaders of Canada, the United States and Mexico were engaged in high-level talks in Ottawa, a more informal international jazz summit took place in Confederation Park. Wednesday night on the TD Ottawa Jazz Festival’s main stage, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra invited members of the Moscow Jazz Orchestra, who have their own festival concert Thursday, to play with them. Keep reading »
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9th Annual Inside the Jazz Note Education Fund Benefit Concert + Conversation
On Thursday evening, the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University was buzzing with anticipation, as two of today’s leading jazz icons –Wynton Marsalis and Christian McBride– prepared to meet onstage for a candid one-on-one. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis Quintet at The Palace Theater
There are expectations baked into a live performance from the caliber of a Wynton Marsalis. An artist who has won a Pulitzer Prize for Music, nine GRAMMY awards, serves as the Director of Jazz studies at Juilliard and is actively involved in a number of humanitarian activities, Marsalis is as much a brand name as any musician in modern history. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis’s Spaces, Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York — ‘Lil Buck moved on a pillow of air’
With Spaces, Wynton Marsalis has created a jazz Carnival of the Animals. The trumpeter-composer conjures a snake from the slide of trombone, the shimmer of cymbal and the snare drum’s dry tick. Four trumpets, three trombones and five saxes render the clucking cacophony of barnyard chickens as well as their jerky gait. Frogs croak in and out of phase, like Steve Reich. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis’s ‘Spaces,’ a Kinetic Series of Zoological Portraits
The kazoos cropped up in the 10th and final movement of “Spaces,” an episodic suite by Wynton Marsalis that had its world premiere at the Rose Theater on Friday. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was swinging light and fast as it happened, bzz-bzz-bzz-bzz-bzz, in a busy rush. It was a cute and clever flourish, in a piece titled “Bees Bees Bees.” And it was also an act of evocation that reflected the larger theme of the suite. Keep reading »
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Abyssinian Mass’ by Wynton Marsalis Review
Wynton Marsalis’s new release, “Abyssinian Mass,” is the third full-length work of a spiritual nature by the trumpeter, composer and bandleader. Compared with his epic “All Rise” (2002), the Mass, which uses the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the 70-voice Chorale Le Chateau choir, is comparatively lean and intimate, and Mr. Marsalis’s compositional ideas are much tighter. The work, which was commissioned by New York’s Abyssinian Baptist Church in 2008 for the 200th anniversary of that African-American institution, received its premiere at JALC’s Rose Hall that year, and then five years later it was taken on tour by the orchestra and recorded. It is now being issued as the fourth album from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Blue Engine Records. Keep reading »
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