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Jazz as conversation - Marsalis explores instincts, teamwork behind a good performance
Great jazz requires a strange alchemy of instinct and expertise, of empathy and teamwork from its musicians — a fact few know better than famed artist and composer Wynton Marsalis. Jazz is a conversation, but a nuanced, swift, and complicated one, he said. At Sanders Theatre on Wednesday, Marsalis and a band of all-star musicians both discussed and demonstrated how to achieve that balance in “At the Speed of Instinct: Choosing Together to Play and Stay Together,” the fourth of Marsalis’ six-part lecture series at Harvard that began in 2011. Coming just two day’s after Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon, the performance provided a collective respite for the campus. Keep reading »
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Listen up, says Marsalis - Master class at the Boston Arts Academy
As many parents can attest, rousing a child from sleep to make it to the bus stop can be a difficult task. Doing so during a vacation week would seem near impossible. But on Thursday, a group of students from Boston and Cambridge happily rose from bed and made it to class. The reason? Wynton Marsalis was in the house. For an hour and a half the famous trumpeter conducted a master class at the Boston Arts Academy, the city’s only public high school for the visual and performing arts. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis returns to Harvard for the fourth in his series of lectures-performance
“We will discuss and demonstrate the techniques, concepts, methods, opportunities and objectives that encourage spontaneous, intelligent and cohesive group decision-making in our music. We will also illuminate how each member of the quintet asserts, accompanies and adjusts to balance the freedom of improvisation with the sacrificial demands of finding and maintaining our common rhythm, known as swing.” Keep reading »
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Reviews and Photos from Wynton’s Third Harvard Lecture “Meet Me at the Crossroads”
Wynton Marsalis recently gave the third of six epic lectures that he is slated to give at Harvard University. He promised that this one wasn’t going to be 4 and half hours long, as the last one was. When he got started, the result was part history lesson, part concert, part spoken-word poetry reading. Three hours into the show, his agenda became clear: He was telling a timeless story about love. For Charlie “Yardbird’’ Parker, inventor of bebop. For Bessie Smith, teller of the low-down nasty truth. For Woody Guthrie, who sang about running from the law. For all those who sang about being both broke and broken-hearted. For every artist who cared more about art than celebrity. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis returns to Harvard University for third lecture in series
Wynton Marsalis continues his two-year lecture series at Harvard with an exploration of root styles of American music in Sanders Theatre on Feb. 6. Currently the artistic director of jazz at Lincoln Center, Marsalis is an accomplished musician, composer, bandleader, and educator who has made the promotion of jazz and cultural literacy his hallmark cause. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis returns to Harvard University for second lecture in series
Marsalis’ second lecture, “The Double Crossing of a Pair of Heels: The Dynamics of Social Dance and American Popular Musics,” will be accompanied by live performances by acclaimed dance professionals, including Jared Grimes, Nelida Tirado, Eddie Torres Jr., Heather Gehring, and Lou Brockman. “In this lecture, I will address the dynamic relationship between American music and social dance in our culture,” Marsalis said. “It will focus on what our dancing and music tells us about our traditions, our sense of community, and our rituals of courtship.” Keep reading »
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“Wynton Goes to Harvard” - An Interview with the Wall Street Journal
Wynton Marsalis Goes To Harvard (APRIL 18, 2011, 10:38 PM ET) 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. 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. Is every… Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis to kick off lecture series at Harvard University
Will teach a master class at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School Harvard University announced today that Wynton Marsalis will launch a two-year performance and lecture series on April 28, with an appearance at Sanders Theater. Currently the Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Marsalis is an accomplished musician, composer, bandleader and educator who has made the promotion of jazz and cultural literacy his hallmark causes. “Wynton Marsalis is both an internationally acclaimed musician and a leader in educating people about the importance of arts and culture,“ Harvard President Drew Faust said. “We are fortunate to have an artist and… Keep reading »
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“Life’s Work: Wynton Marsalis” An Interview for the Harvard Business Review
Life’s Work: Wynton Marsalis An Interview with Wynton Marsalis by Katherine Bell Wynton Marsalis grew up in a family of New Orleans jazz musicians and received his first trumpet as a sixth birthday present from bandleader Al Hirt. At 14 he debuted with the Louisiana Philharmonic; at 17 he moved to New York, where he attended Juilliard, joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, assembled his own band, and began a prolific composing and recording career. In 1987, Marsalis founded Jazz at Lincoln Center, which has grown into the world’s biggest arts organization dedicated to Jazz. Why did you pick the trumpet?… Keep reading »
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Honorary doctorate at Harvard University
With nine extraordinary candidates whose diversity of achievement extend from an original vision of life expressed in film to the expression of law as a primary manifestation of integrity to a diverse and poignant literary style which highlights integrity through the expiration of moral and cultural decline to the engineering of human organs to insightful interpretations of our collective human mythology to what it actually means to mother. I felt out of place. There were a lot of heavyweights up there. It was a beautiful day made more vibrant by the diversity of colors that always attends tradition, pageantry and… Keep reading »
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