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Wynton Marsalis: music can speak
LEONARD FEATHER: Would you classify yourself as conservative, the way Francis Davis said in his book (In the Moment)? WYNTON MARSALIS: Oh no, I’m not conservative. The reason he said that is because I wear suits. He’s thinking more in terms of image than substance. Keep reading »
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Diligence. The most celebrated figure of new jazz speaks his mind: on journalists, money and soul… and Monk, Duke and Clifford
It’s beginning to get like a smokescreen with all this stuff. I wanted to hear a trumpeter, playing jazz and classical music, a great trumpeter, and these days I Seem to be getting a man who talks up a fearsome polemical storm and has his playing shuttled off to some sideline where critics can take it or leave it. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis Plays Cornet Showpieces
Wynton Marsalis’s latest demonstration of classical virtuosity is a revival of showpieces written by, and for, the cornetists who led bands at the turn of the century. Keep reading »
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Angry Young Man With A Horn
Wynton Marsalis leans forward, peers through his glasses and says with his usual fervor, “People actually want to discuss music with me. Me! Their knowledge of music is so limited that I don’t understand how they even think they can converse with me in my own idiom That’s like me wanting to discuss the space program with a rocket scientist. That kind of arrogance is foreign to me.” Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis: Smashing The Stereotypes
Wynton Marsalis is a taste maker beyond his influence as a musician. You see it in his life style, his personal appearance and his influence on young people, particularly young black people. Keep reading »
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Marsalis at Symphony Hall: A show of authoritative lyricism
Wynton Marsalis has always seemed confident - he has, after all, received the adulation usually reserved for more startlingly original artists. Keep reading »
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Jazz: Wynton Marsalis
The trumpeter Wynton Marsalis insists on understatement. In the quintet he’s leading through Sunday at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, every phrase is neatly tucked in, every arrangement carefully planned, every note burnished. Keep reading »
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Marsalis Plus Four at Westwood Playhouse
The career of Wynton Marsalis has entered a new phase. After a hiatus following the departure of his brother Branford, during which he led a quartet, the 25-year-old prodigal son of the trumpet has returned to the old format by hiring Don Braden, a saxophonist from Louisville. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis Quintet has good, bad moment
The great alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley once said, “Never trust a man in a clean trench coat.” I doubt if he was thinking of Wynton Marsalis, whose quintet played Sunday night at the Civic Center, since Marsalis was probably still running around New Orleans in knee pants when Adderley’s horn was silenced. Keep reading »
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Hounding Out The Jazz Traitors
In his foreword to the new edition of The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Jazz, trumpeter WYNTON MARSALIS invokes the spirit of Louis Armstrong and lambasts the “primitives” and “jazz rockers” who have betrayed the truth and the tradition of the music. Keep reading »