-
The Telegraph: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra/Congo Square, Barbican, review
Wynton Marsalis, the celebrated American trumpeter, composer and band-leader, likes to think big. For him jazz is virtuoso musicality, uproarious enjoyment, spiritual edification and cultural memory, all rolled into one. To fulfil that vision he’s created several ambitious multi-movement suites for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. One of them, Congo Square, opened the orchestra’s current residency at the Barbican. Keep reading »
-
Evening Standard: Congo Square: Wynton Marsalis & the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Barbican Hall
Congo Square is a quiet spot in north-central New Orleans, near Louis Armstrong Park. Tourists take pictures of Louis’s statue there before lunching in the French Quarter. Little over a century earlier, however, it had a very different function. Keep reading »
-
Jazz Journal: Wynton Marsalis/Congo Square
Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra opened their 2012 residency at London’s Barbican Centre yesterday evening with a superb performance that celebrated the very birth of jazz in company with Ghanian drummer Yacub Addy and the band Odadaa! Congo Square was the public space in New Orleans where African slaves gathered on Sunday afternoons to dance and play, and was the only place in the USA where they could gather freely and celebrate their own music and culture. Inspired by this activity between the mid-1700s and the late 1800s, Marsalis and Ghanaian drum master Yacub Addy’s two-hour suite Congo Square celebrates the joy of that music and marks its influence on the jazz that followed. Keep reading »
-
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. 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!. Keep reading »
-
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. Keep reading »
-
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. “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.” Keep reading »
-
Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis return to the Barbican in July 2012
The world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis return to the Barbican for their second International Associate residency in July 2012. Following on from their critically acclaimed visit in 2010, the second residency will give audiences the opportunity to experience music performed by some of America’s finest jazz musicians in concerts, workshops, masterclasses, professional development events and talks. Keep reading »
-
As Seen on 60 Minutes
Free download of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis performing Wynton’s composition “Sanctified Blues” from Congo Square during their Cuban tour, a sneak preview from the JLCO’s upcoming CD “Five Nights In Havana“, coming out in 2012. Keep reading »
-
HBO releases trailer for their new series “Treme”, featuring a selection from “Congo Square”
Ever since HBO’s critically acclaimed masterpiece ‘The Wire’ went off the air two years ago, fans have been waiting to see what creators David Simon and Eric Overmyer would come up with next. So when word came out that they were going to take on one of the most complicated issues in the country—the effort to rebuild New Orleans in the aftermath of 2005’s devastating Hurricane Katrina—fans and pundits alike were both intrigued by the idea and dismayed at the wait for the project to actually materialize. Could the team from ‘The Wire’ find their magic again? And, if so, could even they do the subject matter justice? Keep reading »
-
Wynton discuss about jazz with Ethan Iverson
Last August, pianist Ethan Iverson sat down with Wynton and started working on the following collection of posts. Contents include: Interview with Wynton Marsalis (Part one): Detailed discussion with audio clips of Wynton’s latest major opus, Congo Square, a two-CD set combining the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and Odadaa! (the West African drum ensemble led by Yacub Addy). Interview with Wynton Marsalis (Part two): A casual blindfold test of classic trumpet solos including Wynton’s decoding of improvising procedures on the legendary “Knozz-Moe-King” from Live at Blues Alley. This section also includes general thoughts on race and education from… Keep reading »
Home » News