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News Updates – Slavery

  • Inspired By Injustice, Wynton Marsalis Reflects On His Music

    Posted on July 2nd, 2020 in Profiles & Interviews

    Wynton Marsalis has always been deeply engaged in the subject of American race relations. The issue was a crucial part of his education as a young musician in New Orleans, and it has been a core preoccupation of his own work going as far back as Black Codes (From the Underground), a trailblazing album from 1985.   Keep reading »

  • Homegrown Privileges Vanish in Exile

    Posted on May 20th, 2019 in Profiles & Interviews

    Commissioned by the Lincoln Center in New York City and released in 1997 by Columbia Records, Blood on the Fields is a three-and-a-half-hour jazz oratorio written by [Wynton Marsalis](http://64parishes.org/entry/wynton-marsalis/). The piece considers the lives of Jesse and Leona, an African prince and a commoner, who are deported from their native land and enslaved on a cotton plantation in the American South.   Keep reading »

  • The History and Systems of Slavery Behind Wynton Marsalis’ Blood on the Fields

    Posted on July 9th, 2016 in Profiles & Interviews

    Commissioned by the Lincoln Center in New York City and released in 1997 by Columbia Records, Blood on the Fields is a three-and-a-half-hour jazz oratorio written by Wynton Marsalis. The piece considers the lives of Jesse and Leona, an African prince and a commoner, who are deported from their native land and enslaved on a cotton plantation in the American South.   Keep reading »

  • JLCO with Wynton Marsalis and guest artists reprise “Blood on the Fields”

    Posted on February 19th, 2013 in Concerts | 9

    Jazz at Lincoln Center continues its 25th anniversary celebration with a special performance of Blood On The Fields, Wynton Marsalis’ Pulitzer prize-winning jazz oratorio.  Eighteen years after its premiere at Alice Tully Hall, the jazz oratorio on slavery and freedom will be performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.  Eric Reed, featured pianist on the premiere and original Blood On The Fields recording, joins the JLCO for this special concert event.  Blood on the Fields remains one of Marsalis’ greatest works and reinforces his dictum that “all jazz is modern.”  Rising star baritone Gregory Porter, scat-master Kenny Washington, and the great contralto Paula West reprise the vocal roles. 

      Keep reading »

  • Wynton Marsalis’ Pulitzer-winning ‘Blood on the Fields’ returns

    Posted on February 12th, 2013 in Profiles & Interviews

    Sixteen years ago, newspapers across America riffed on an unexpected theme: For the first time, a jazz composition had won the country’s highest musical honor. “Marsalis swings a Pulitzer” trumpeted USA Today, its message echoing wherever cultural news was reported. Not since Duke Ellington had been snubbed by the Pulitzers in 1965 — prompting two jury members who recommended him for the award to quit — had jazz become so dramatically linked to the award.   Keep reading »

  • Wynton Marsalis conjures sounds of early jazz in “Congo Square’

    Posted on June 10th, 2007 in Profiles & Interviews

    The drums return when famed jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis opens the 2007 season of the Mountain Laurel Center for the Performing Arts with a new composition, “Congo Square,” written in collaboration with the Ghanaian master drummer Yacub Addy.   Keep reading »

  • JazzTimes: Wynton Marsalis’ From the Plantation to the Penitentiary

    Posted on April 9th, 2007 in Review

    The infuriating thing about Wynton Marsalis is that he is so incredibly talented that you can never simply dismiss him and yet he is so wrong-headed about so many things that you can never wholly embrace him either. Nothing brings this dilemma into sharper focus than his new album, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary.   Keep reading »

  • Wynton Marsalis Checks In on The Land That Never Has Been Yet

    Posted on April 8th, 2007 in Review

    I’ve been listening to Wynton Marsalis’ new disc From the Plantation to the Penitentiary a lot.  It’s got the music—a neat jazz combo running through a variety of styles.  It’s just enough bop and bebop so it doesn’t put one to sleep like a Kenny G. solo, but it’s not an avalanche of sound like those from Coltrane’s thundering Ascension either.  Then there’s the vocals.  Yes, the vocals.  Mr. Marsalis is putting some lyrics to his tunes on this one, and he’s got plenty to say.

      Keep reading »

  • Wynton Marsalis: Wynton Throws Down the Gauntlet

    Posted on March 19th, 2007 in Profiles & Interviews | 1

    Like Howard Beale in Network, Wynton Marsalis is mad as hell and he’s not gonna take it anymore. Of course, the 45-year-old trumpeter-bandleader and celebrated jazz ambassador has always been riled and outraged, ever since he was an audacious, outspoken kid back in New Orleans. And over the course of the past 20 years, he has always spoken his mind in interviews or in casual conversation. Like his equally unguarded brother Branford, you know where Wynton stands. He pulls no punches, never attempts to obfuscate. Like him or not, he’s painfully direct, unwavering in his convictions.

      Keep reading »

  • Revolution: Wynton Marsalis’ From the Plantation to the Penitentiary

    Posted on March 18th, 2007 in Review

    Let’s say you could live to be 200 years old, you came in, in 1800. You are 165 years old before you even legally could do a lot of basic things. But like with a child, man, that first 65 years – whew, just think about that first 65 years… America was like: welcome, this is what we got for you.   Keep reading »