Marsalis and Company, Playing With Fire
When trumpeter and Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra artistic director Wynton Marsalis announced that the ensemble was about to perform “Resolution” from John Coltrane’s masterwork “A Love Supreme” at the Kennedy Center on Sunday night, a member of the audience offered a little unsolicited advice: “Don’t mess it up!”
He needn’t have worried. After laughing off the comment, the band proved its mettle with an arrangement that easily ranked among the evening’s highlights. Bassist Carlos Henriquez extended and imaginatively embellished the introduction originally played by Jimmy Garrison. And pianist Eric Lewis, clearly inspired by McCoy Tyner’s dense chordal clusters and percussive attack, fashioned an interlude teeming with such energy, spirit and tension that the audience erupted with applause.
The concert opened, however, with a shower of pinched, smeared and moaning blue notes, courtesy of Thelonious Monk’s “Oska T,” a seldom-heard big-band vehicle that provided an earthy showcase for Marsalis’s plunger-muted horn. The trumpeter was less talkative than usual, and for most part seemed content to play a supporting role in the ensemble, deftly shading or illuminating the brass charts. At one point he and drummer Herlin Riley contributed an original suite of orchestrated “grooves,” which moved from swing time into odd-meter excursions that evoked gospel and funk sounds. But the piece ultimately proved more notable for its parts — especially the parts sparked by Riley’s kinetic energy — than for its overarching design.
As in the past, the orchestra also unearthed an arrangement by a jazz giant — in this case, Billy Strayhorn’s lovely rendering of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Baritone saxophonist Joe Temperley immediately introduced a sumptuous shade of indigo, and it wasn’t until much later that Vincent Goines fluidly alluded to the theme’s spiraling clarinet signature. There was also ample room throughout the concert for trombonist Ron Westray, alto saxophonist Wess Anderson, trumpeter Ryan Kisor and others to distinguish themselves.
Presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society, the evening ended in Ellington-hued fashion, with a chugging, whistling reprise of Marsalis’s “Caboose” from “Big Train.”
by Mike Joyce
Source: The Washington Post