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Garth Fagan, Wynton Marsalis pair for new work
About 25 years ago, choreographer Garth Fagan was walking down East Avenue and saw something out of the ordinary. The famous jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis was strolling around, looking rather blue. Marsalis had just performed in Rochester and was having a few band quibbles.
“I picked him up and took him to the studio to see a performance,” says Fagan.
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Wynton’s interview on EBONY - Entertainment and Culture
In 1987, Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Wynton Marsalis directed a summer concert series entitled “Classical Jazz at Lincoln Center” in New York City. That modest series has grown into the impressive, multi-venue performance venue known as Jazz at Lincoln Center: the world’s largest not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to jazz in the world, with year-round concerts, educational events, band competitions, film programs and multimedia broadcasts and webcasts.
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As JALC prepares to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary with its season premiere later this month, EBONY talked with Marsalis, who serves as JALC’s Managing and Artistic Director, about the venue’s evolution, his uncompromising devotion to the music and his continuing mission to spread the gospel of jazz…by any digital means necessary. -
BT River of Music: Wynton Marsalis interview for London 2012
Acclaimed trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his elite big-band jazz players will be a highlight on the Americas stage at BT River of Music, writes Adam Sweeting. Keep reading »
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Heat combo: When Wynton Marsalis met Yacub Addy
We first saw Wynton Marsalis on television soloing with a symphony orchestra in 1981. The announcer said he came from New Orleans. “I’m going to work with this man,” my husband Yacub Addy said.
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I was surprised because Yacub is a traditional Ghanaian drummer of the Ga ethnic group. I couldn’t visualise him working with this classically trained trumpeter, although Wynton is known for jazz, which Yacub loved since he was a teenager in Ghana, dancing to American big band hits on the streets of Accra. His music led him from Ghana to Europe and America, where in 1982, as an artist and manager team, we created his current Ghanaian ensemble Odadaa!. -
Wynton on METRO UK: Jazz fusion is like Tabasco, it works in small doses
This month he appears to be bringing a large chunk of that activity to Britain for one of his biannual visits. Alongside assorted education packages around London and a festival for school bands, Marsalis will conduct a mammoth Jazz at Lincoln Center residency at London’s Barbican and beyond with selected bands. The performances include a collaboration with an African drum troupe, a Harlem-style Abyssinian mass with a 100-voice choir, a Duke Ellington tribute, an exploration of Afro-Cuban jazz, a concert at Birmingham Symphony Hall on July 20 and the British debut of Marsalis’s epic Swing Symphony.
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Wynton’s interview on the Telegraph: It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got swing
Being with Wynton Marsalis is always an education. He’s happiest when he can enthuse about something, or learn something new from whoever he’s speaking to. Right now, sitting over lunch in a Japanese restaurant in New York, he’s off on the topic of jazz’s Anglo-Celtic roots.
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“Those folk songs and hymns the slaves learnt from their masters were the real basis, the African element was grafted on top, not the other way round,” he says very firmly, “and this is why African and jazz rhythms developed in a different way. Listen, if you clap a marching rhythm, one-two-three-four, you can fit a swing rhythm over the top, like this.” -
Harvard EdCast: The Jazz in Teaching
On February 7, jazz musician and educator Wynton Marsalis visited the Ed School for the discussion, “Educating for Moral Agency and Engaged Citizenship,” touching on how jazz concepts can be applied to life both in and outside the classroom. Keep reading »
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Wynton @ 50 - Downbeat
All eyes have turned to a special birthday taking place in the jazz community: Wynton Marsalis turned 50 on Oct. 18. In celebration of Marsalis’ birthday, a number of people in the music shared their thoughts on Wynton and his professional and/or personal impact. Keep reading »
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WSJ Covers Holiday Under the Stars
Well, I’d say this one calls for a toast: An item on my wish list for 2011 has actually come true. Last year—in this column on Dec. 27, 2010—I made a list of five ways that New York City could be a better place for the arts and audiences in the coming year. Admittedly, some of the wishes were improbable, such as a campaign alerting audiences that standing ovations aren’t the required response to every single show in town. Some things were practical: Why can’t there be an orderly, working cab stand at Lincoln Center?
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Downbeat Celebrates Wynton’s 50th
With a Lincoln Center special airing on PBS, all eyes have turned to a special birthday taking place in the jazz community: Wynton Marsalis turned 50 on Oct. 18. In celebration of Marsalis’ birthday, a number of people in the music shared their thoughts on Wynton and his professional and/or personal impact.
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