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The jazz orchestra, brick by brick
Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis and his virtuoso Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra treated a Sanders Theatre audience to a three-hour master class Thursday evening that re-created a pivotal quarter century of jazz innovation against the backdrop of American history. His combination lecture and performance, “Setting the Communal Table: The Evolution of the Jazz Orchestra,” centered on jazz’s exploding popularity from the 1920s to the early ’40s. It was the penultimate in a six lecture-performance series by Marsalis sponsored by the Office of the President and the Office of the Provost, with the goal of fostering “a conversation about the arts on campus,” according to Harvard President Drew Faust, who attended the event. Keep reading »
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Winners of 17th Essentially Ellington Competition 2012
Three high school jazz bands took top honors on Sunday night at the 17th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival, presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center. The bands were chosen by a panel of judges composed of distinguished jazz musicians and historians, including Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Artistic Director WYNTON MARSALIS, DAVID BERGER, BILL DOBBINS, JEFF HAMILTON and SHERMAN IRBY. The three top-placing bands were chosen from a field of 15 finalist bands that participated in the three-day Competition & Festival from May 4-6.
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Bicoastal Swing and Stomp in a Lively Onstage Face-Off
In Jazz at Lincoln Center’s business model of jazz, competition brings heroism. Particularly group heroism: a band, preferably being challenged by another band, is its preferred symbol of jazz’s health. Keep reading »
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Dizzy Gillespie, the Man and the Music
Sometimes concerts break up into small parts of great brilliance, and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s ‘‘Dizzy’s Big-Band Bop,’’ the opening concert of its season and a tribute to the orchestral work of Dizzy Gillespie, did just that. Keep reading »
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The Battle of the Bands, Part Two
Silence played a big part in the Battle of the Bands, a showdown between the jazz orchestras of Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center on Friday night at Avery Fisher Hall. The concert, in its second year as part of the JVC Jazz Festival, featured two orchestras at their peak. Keep reading »