-
Wayne Shorter/JLCO review – bravura and cool as jazz giant comes to town
Wynton Marsalis’s spirited and long-running Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra often devote their shows to the legacies of pioneers, late or living – but they could hardly have picked a more charismatic guest for the opening night of their current Barbican residency. The work of Wayne Shorter, the 82 year-old saxophonist with a sound as unique as a thumbprint and one of jazz’s greatest small-band composers, was hailed on Thursday in a series of offbeat mini-concertos in which he was principal improvising soloist. Keep reading »
-
Wayne Shorter with JLCO | London, Barbican
I first saw the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2003. Wynton Marsalis and his colleagues changed the way I heard music and the centre of my musical universe. How could this concert compare? Keep reading »
-
Wayne Shorter and Wynton Marsalis with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Barbican
Wayne Shorter and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra – that sounds like a dream pairing. Shorter, now 82, is one of the true greats, a saxophonist and composer with an enchanting and unpredictable approach that makes him instantly recognisable. Keep reading »
-
When Shorter and Marsalis brought the house down
This encounter between famed saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter and Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra was bound to be exciting – but also potentially problematic. Wayne Shorter shot to fame in the late Fifties and Sixties when he played with Miles Davis and Art Blakey, and penned some immortal standards. Since then, like some jazz Ulysses, he has roamed into distant seas with a trusty band of colleagues, creating vast visionary pieces that can play for an hour at a stretch. His eye is on the future. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis and Nicola Benedetti: across the divide
They might have gone a lifetime without meeting. She is a Scottish violinist, a Yehudi Menuhin School alumna, something of a poster-girl for the British classical music industry. He is a legendary New Orleans-born jazz trumpeter, composer and teacher whose impression of playing an imaginary violin is passable at best. In fact the two musicians happened to meet 10 years ago at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center — and in the past few months Nicola Benedetti, 28, and Wynton Marsalis, 53, have become a double act. Keep reading »
-
They took me in like I was their son’: Wynton Marsalis on jazz’s great tradition
At the end of his performance at the Barbican with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis made a little speech. The next piece, he announced, was a number that Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers used to play. Marsalis then recalled how he himself had played with the Jazz Messengers as an 18-year-old trumpet prodigy. He described how much he had learned from the drummer, who was then approaching 60, and especially about ‘the sacrifices you have to make to play this music’. Then the band roared into ‘Free for All’ by Wayne Shorter.
Keep reading » -
Wynton Marsalis Trumpets Youth, Musical Diversity At Annual London Residency
The solo played by U.S. jazzman Wynton Marsalis to close his now-annual residency at London’s Barbican this week was a rare personal moment in what was otherwise a master class in sharing the limelight.
Keep reading »
In lieu of a full-fledged encore with his 14-strong Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO), Marsalis entertained with a small combo, delighting an already bouncing crowd with swooping scales of trumpet. -
Review: Wynton Marsalis Quintet at Ronnie Scott’s
It’s easy to caricature Wynton Marsalis as the Brian Sewell of jazz, a fogey-ish cultural conservative who’ll gleefully disparage most innovations of the past half century. But, in art criticism terms, he’s closer to Robert Hughes. He’s a disappointed modernist: thrilled by the jazz avant garde of the 20s to the 50s, unimpressed by the postmodern fusions and wilful abstractions that followed. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis Quintet, Ronnie Scott’s, London – review
Wynton Marsalis doesn’t have much truck with amplification, and played the entire first house of his short Ronnie Scott’s residency off-mic at the level of an animated conversation. Occasionally voices were raised, sometimes they fell to a whisper and once there was a brief shouting match. Keep reading »
-
For The First Time, Wynton Marsalis Quintet Streams Live From Ronnie Scott’s
Audiences around the world will be able to catch Wynton Marsalis and his quintet’s sold out performance on Tuesday, July 23 at Ronnie Scott’s via livestream - in a first for the club.
Keep reading »
Featuring a multi-camera setup, the free HD broadcast will give viewers a true sense of being there. Marsalis is joined by Walter Blanding (sax/clarinet), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Ali Jackson (drums) and Dan Nimmer (piano).