-
Wynton Marsalis Quintet at Blues Alley
As Wynton Marsalis no doubt knows, nothing is potentially more dangerous in the arts than early critical acclaim. Last year the young trumpeter skyrocketed from the ranks of promising newcomers to become the recipient of several prestigious jazz awards. Now he’s faced with the challenge of living up to those honors and the ensuing publicity. Keep reading »
-
A Common Understanding (Wynton and Branford Marsalis interview): Downbeat December 1982
Nineteen eighty-two was the year of Wynton Marsalis – down beat readers crowned him Jazz Musician of the Year; his debut LP copped Jazz Album of the Year honors; and he was named No. 1 Trumpet (handily defeating Miles in each category). Keep reading »
-
Darting into the Stratosphere
We’re walking up from the downstairs bar at Ronnie’s, and Wynton Marsalis swivels to check my silvery noose. Of course, I tell him where I got it (you think I’m going to tell you?). Keep reading »
-
Modern New Orleans
At the Public Theater’s New Orleans-New York jazz concerts on Friday and Saturday, the wind players strolled onto the stage to begin solos, offstage to end them. It was a subtle but direct reminder of the connection between this sextet and the marches and street parades that lend so much New Orleans music its syncopated strut - a tradition that came through the modern harmonies of the sextet’s compositions. Keep reading »
-
A Modern Kind of New Orleans Jazz In Town
JAZZ as we know it began in New Orleans. Black musicians may have been improvising a jazzlike music in other cities and towns in the early years of this century, but Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong and the other innovators who stamped their identities on the new music and breathed life into it were all New Orleans men. Keep reading »
-
Trumpeter WYNTON MARSALIS has been hailed as a symbol for the New Decade
Trumpeter WYNTON MARSALIS has been hailed as a symbol for the New Decade, and that’s a’lot to live up to. Chrissie Murray brings an insight into this forthright, young spokesman for jazz in the Eighties. Keep reading »
-
A family of music phenoms
It would require a long journey back into musical history to find a sibling team as precociously talented as the Marsalis Brothers. A couple of years ago they were just a pair of teen-agers unknown outside their New Orleans home, presently they have the hottest and most widely publicized new combo in jazz, a CBS Records contract, and a schedule that takes in festivals around the United States and Europe. Keep reading »
-
Jazz Families Bridge The Generation Gap
During the early decades of jazz it wasn’t at all unusual to find fathers and sons playing together in the same bands and indulging in familial give-and-take - mature musicianship and on-the-job know-how versus youthful innovation and first-time exuberance. In the black neighborhoods of New Orleans and the other cities where jazz flourished early, only the holier-than-thou looked down on music as a profession. It was an honorable route out of the black ghetto, in many cases the only route. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis’ Top Brass
Virtuosity is rare in both the jazz and classical worlds, and trumpet player Wynton Marsalis is determined to be the best in both of them. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis happened to have an ideal role model in his father, the pianist Ellis Marsalis
How Wynton Marsalis, keeps his head screwed on straight is beyond me. Such lavish and sustained praise has been aimed at this fine young trumpeter from New Orleans over the last few months that I cannot conceive of any 20-year-old, even one as obviously whole and motivated and self-disciplined as Marsalis, not being affected in a darkly deleterious way. Keep reading »