Home» News Updates

News Updates

  • Marsalis Concerto in D, Barbican, London — ‘Vivid, restless’

    Posted on November 9th, 2015 in Review

    Contrary to some preconceptions, classical music has always opened its arms to outside influences. In the US, jazz and classical have enjoyed a particularly fruitful courtship. If there ever were boundaries that mattered, they disappeared long ago. Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein have all been there, so Wynton Marsalis is in good company.   Keep reading »

  • LSO/Gaffigan review – Nicola Benedetti does her best with unrestrained Marsalis

    Posted on November 8th, 2015 in Review

    Wynton Marsalis is a very busy musician. On the night Nicola Benedetti was premiering his violin concerto in London, Marsalis was in Princeton, on tour with his Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra. So one could understand if he feared he might not get the time to write another violin concerto. Perhaps that’s why he seemed to be throwing everything he had at this one.   Keep reading »

  • Bold venture is more glorified jam session than fully-achieved work

    Posted on November 7th, 2015 in Review

    Wynton Marsalis has made several forays across the jazz-classical divide, but his Concerto in D, which was written for – and, more importantly, with - the violinist Nicola Benedetti, marks a bold new departure.   Keep reading »

  • Benedetti, LSO, Gaffigan, Barbican

    Posted on November 7th, 2015 in Review

    A full house for a premiere performance: Wynton Marsalis bucks the trend in contemporary music. He’s an established name, more for his jazz than his classical work. But in recent years he has produced a substantial body of orchestral music, so the flocking crowds know what to expect. His new Violin Concerto continues the trend.   Keep reading »

  • Nicola Benedetti gives premiere of Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto

    Posted on November 7th, 2015 in Review

    Curiously – for an orchestra that promoted a 12-concert Violin Festival at the end of last season, but which included no new works for the instrument – the LSO followed its recent UK premiere of John Adams’s Scheherazade.2 with another American composer’s violin piece written for a female soloist (Leila Josefowicz), this time by Wynton Marsalis for Nicola Benedetti. Both are substantial, lengthy and impressive works in four movements.   Keep reading »

  • Nicola Benedetti and Wynton Marsalis, Barbican, review: ‘a labour of love’

    Posted on November 7th, 2015 in Review

    It’s often said that the London Symphony Orchestra is our most American-sounding orchestra. And boy, didn’t it seem so last Friday. It was an evening of unabashed American pizzazz, led by the diminutive American conductor James Gaffigan, who at times looked like a Broadway show dancer doing a spot of moonlighting on the podium. Unorthodox his knee-bends and hip-sways may have been, but they certainly did the job.   Keep reading »

  • Carlos Henriquez Radiates Gratitude in a South Bronx Homecoming

    Posted on September 13th, 2015 in Review

    Nearly every note from Carlos Henriquez, the bassist for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, is cool, clear, judicious, full of body and intent. His sound doesn’t grasp or rush; informed by the economy of Afro-Latin tumbao bass patterns, it connects and assists. It has its moral priorities straight.   Keep reading »

  • Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra pack the house, and the ears

    Posted on August 30th, 2015 in Review

    The second of two area concerts by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis was a hybrid affair, with a rather brief intermission separating a tribute to Duke Ellington by JLCO’s 16 players and a performance by the combined forces of the JLCO and the Cleveland Orchestra, led by William Eddins, of Marsalis’ “Swing Symphony.”  The result was certainly a feast of music, even if there was more of it than an audience could digest at a single setting.   Keep reading »

  • U.S. - Cuban love affair continues, via jazz

    Posted on August 18th, 2015 in Review

    Long before the U.S. flag rose above the reopened American embassy in Havana last Friday, jazz was linking two feuding nations. Long before President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro went on TV last December to announce a thaw in relations between the countries, jazz musicians from both places nurtured ties that transcended politics.   Keep reading »

  • Camp counselor: A jazz star shows noteworthy devotion

    Posted on August 2nd, 2015 in Review

    Wynton Marsalis is a superstar in the jazz world: He has won nine Grammys, was the first jazz composer to win a Pulitzer Prize and has even graced the cover of Time magazine. Like many superstars, he is also divisive. Some critics contend he is more entertainer, or populist, than artist.   Keep reading »