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Abyssinian Mass’ by Wynton Marsalis Review
Wynton Marsalis’s new release, “Abyssinian Mass,” is the third full-length work of a spiritual nature by the trumpeter, composer and bandleader. Compared with his epic “All Rise” (2002), the Mass, which uses the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the 70-voice Chorale Le Chateau choir, is comparatively lean and intimate, and Mr. Marsalis’s compositional ideas are much tighter. The work, which was commissioned by New York’s Abyssinian Baptist Church in 2008 for the 200th anniversary of that African-American institution, received its premiere at JALC’s Rose Hall that year, and then five years later it was taken on tour by the orchestra and recorded. It is now being issued as the fourth album from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Blue Engine Records. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis’s Favorite Things
“ONE OF MY MENTORS was Yacub Addy, a master Ghanaian drummer. He made the drum in front. When he gave it to me, he said that the sound of a drum is the soul of the drum, something I always remember. The blue book on the table, Autobiography of a Yogi, is one that my father gave me when I left home at 17. We had never talked about yoga or Eastern religion—I was just a country boy. But I read the book while I was on the bus and enjoyed it. My youngest son is a painter. That’s his work propped up on the book. His images have so much feeling in them. Keep reading »
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Wall Street Journal: Jazzy Wynton Marsalis
ACCORDING TO WYNTON Marsalis, jazz “places a premium on originality and individuality.” Personal style has always has been a key element to the genre, to the music itself and beyond. “When people dress well, they play well,” said Mr. Marsalis, 51, in an interview at the gleaming new offices of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York (JALC).
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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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“Wynton Goes to Harvard” - An Interview with the Wall Street Journal
Pulitzer-prize winning jazzman Wynton Marsalis considers himself both student and teacher of music, which is why it comes as no surprise that his newest undertaking is a two-year lecture series at Harvard University.
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Beginning on April 28, Marsalis will lecture and perform a class entitled “Music as Metaphor.” The nine-time Grammy award winner currently serves as the artistic director for Jazz at Lincoln Center, a role he will keep throughout the lecture series. Speakeasy talked with Marsalis about the coming series, his love of last-minute pressures and the concept of improvisation. -
Five City “LOUIS” Tour Reviewed
From August 25th through August 31st Wynton, Cecile Licad and a 10-piece jazz ensemble premiered Louis, a silent film directed by Dan Pritzker. The sold out tour reached five cities and was reviewed by press from around the world.
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Wynton Marsalis’s Enduring Opus
Toddlers filled a classroom one recent Saturday morning inside Frederick P. Rose Hall. Most sat in a circle brandishing toy shakers, some wandered off in the stagger of the newly walking. Welcome to WeBop!, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s program for children 8 months to 5 years old, at which singer Patrice Turner cleverly fit the words to the children’s book “Goodnight, Moon” into John Coltrane’s “Central Park West.”
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Wynton featured on Wall Street Journal’s campaign
Last year, the Wall Street Journal launched a new campaign, “Every Journey Needs a Journal”, that showed the paths celebrities lives have taken, and how people you might not consider to be WSJ reader value it to guide them on that journey. The campaign featured the personal “stories”, bios and behind-the-scene video of some notable folks such as Wynton, Jake Burton, Cheryl Crow, Kenneth Cole, Steven Levitt, Alice Waters, Paul Teutul Sr.
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Marsalis on Jazz: His five favorite classic recordings
We caught up with Wynton Marsalis, the 43-year-old jazz trumpeter and composer, as he was preparing for the fall concert series at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he is artistic director. The new program salutes the great cities of jazz; tonight Mr. Marsalis and other artists will perform in a hurricane-relief benefit concert for New Orleans. Here, the Pulitzer-winning musician tells us why he thinks these five albums deserve consideration as the finest jazz recordings of all time.
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Marsalis Aims for Pride and Purity
When I was a child, my music teacher told me I could best learn the names of the notes on the lines of the staff by keeping in mind that Every Good Boy Does Fine. After all these years, I finally am able to visualize that paragon of exemplary musical behavior climbing up the staff. He is Wynton Marsalis, who may be the most self-disciplined jazzman in the history of that volcanic art. Keep reading »