Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis Performs Music of Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Charles Mingus, and World Premiere of Andy Farber’s “Usonian Structures” in Masters of Form:
Masters of Form: Duke, Jelly Roll, and Mingus, in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater on Feb. 2-3, 2024, at 8:00 p.m., features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis; performing masterfully structured pieces from musical architects Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Charles Mingus.
The concert event also features the world premiere of “Usonian Structures,” a new suite by award-winning jazz composer, arranger, and saxophonist Andy Farber, inspired by architectural structures of the immortal architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
“Frank Lloyd Wright and Usonia, the design philosophy he created, have long served as an inspiration for my new work,” said Farber. “The name ‘Usonia’ was derived from ‘United States of North America,’ but Wright was also influenced by other cultures and applied it to his work – as jazz musicians have done throughout history.” He continued, “each movement of ‘Usonian Structures’ has been inspired by one of Wright’s iconic designs: the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois; Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin; the Ennis, Storer, and Freeman houses of Los Angeles, California; Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania; Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City; and various Usonian style homes. I look forward to premiering this piece with Wynton and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.”
On the other half of the Masters of Form: Duke, Jelly Roll, and Mingus concert, the JLCO, music directed by trombonist Vincent Gardner, emphasizes the brilliant layering that musical architects Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Charles Mingus applied in their compositions.
Ticket information can be found on jazz.org/form
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2023-24 season focuses on the concept of community; the broader community of jazz; the numerous communities that nurtured its master practitioners across its timeline; the communities of consciousness that influenced these practitioners; the music’s power to bridge divides and coalesce these distinct communities; and the role of jazz – and the arts writ large – in maintaining the human connection in the digital era. Throughout its 2023-24 season, Jazz at Lincoln Center explores these subjects with concerts featuring the forward-thinking composers, virtuosic improvisers, and ingenious conceptualists that populate the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Implicitly or explicitly, season concerts, education programs, advocacy initiatives, and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tours directly evoke themes that illuminate, as Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis puts it, the notion that, “Our music has the exceptional ability to bring people together.”
The organization’s 36th season runs from Sept. 21, 2023, to June 8, 2024 in Rose Theater, The Appel Room, and Dizzy’s Club – all at Frederick P. Rose Hall, the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located on Broadway at 60th Street in New York, NY. In addition to 24 unique live concerts throughout Frederick P. Rose Hall and more than 350 nights of music at Dizzy’s Club, the organization offers webcast performances via the Jazz Live app, in-person and virtual education programs, and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis tour dates worldwide.
For a complete listing of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2023-24 season concerts, please visit jazz.org/2324season