Home» News Updates

News Updates

  • Wynton On Being Thankful On Thanksgiving

    Posted on November 21st, 2012 in Video | 1

    Turkey may be the ceremonial centerpiece but let’s not forget about stuffing, cranberry sauce and all the comfort and dysfunction that family and extended family bring to the table. Thanksgiving: the mythic meal shared by Native Americans with starving Pilgrims became a symbol of giving to others in need, of accepting kindness with gratitude and of recognizing the temperamental authority of Mother Nature through prayer. It was in response to the bloodiest year of the Civil War, that President Lincoln decreed the final Thursday in November to be the holiday we now observe. Through the years this annual celebration of thanking and giving, praying and cooking has become a sacred tradition. The harder the times, the greater the giving, the deeper the thanks.

      Keep reading »

  • Wynton Marsalis teaches Loyola jazz students lessons in music, life

    Posted on October 24th, 2012 in Review

    Lost in concentration, Wynton Marsalis prowled the stage of Loyola University’s Louis J. Roussel Performance Hall, dissecting a student big band’s rendition of the jazz standard “Take the ‘A’ Train.” The New Orleans-born, Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz trumpeter did not necessarily like all that he heard.   Keep reading »

  • An Unforgettable Evening With Wynton Marsalis, Family And Friends

    Posted on October 23rd, 2012 in Review

    It was obvious when Mr. Ellis Marsalis took a seat in the center of a sold-out audience last night at Loyola’s Louis J. Roussel Performance Hall that the evening would be a special one. No one could have guessed that the performance by his son, Wynton, would turn into the once-in-a-lifetime event it became.
    The younger Marsalis, 51, performing as part of Loyola University’s Presidential Centennial Guest Series, opened the set with his composition “Free to Be.” Accompanying the nine-time Grammy-winning trumpeter and Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center was a world-class ensemble featuring Loyola alum Victor Goines (clarinet and saxophone), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Ali Jackson (drums), and Dan Nimmer (piano), who traded solos to resounding applause. Marsalis was thoughtful and gracious, grabbing a towel at stage left for Jackson, and musing at length on the importance of his upbringing, and the basic values of integrity and equality instilled in him by his father.

      Keep reading »

  • New book: Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

    Posted on October 15th, 2012 in Books | 1

    The creators of Jazz ABZ are back for an encore. With infectious rhythm and rhyme, musical master Wynton Marsalis opens kids’ ears to the sounds around us. On sale now!

      Keep reading »

  • Watch the Wynton Marsalis Quintet LIVE from Doha, Qatar

    Posted on October 5th, 2012 in Concerts | 2

    Tune in today at 2PM & 4PM EDT to see the Wynton Marsalis Quintet perform LIVE from Jazz at Lincoln Center Doha! Live webcasts from Jazz at Lincoln Center DOHA will continue throughout October 5, 6, 8, 2012.

      Keep reading »

  • Forces of Nature: Lightning, Water, Music and Movement

    Posted on October 2nd, 2012 in Review

    A lighthouse guides a ship to safety. A lightning rod diverts a bolt from a structure by providing a direct path to the ground. Still, the opening images of “Lighthouse/Lightning Rod,” a new work by the choreographer Garth Fagan, with loose, exuberant music by the jazz composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, hint at danger as much as at security. Dancers, wearing aquatically themed purples and blues, move spontaneously, as if caught in a riptide: with little warning, they change direction, hopping forward on one leg while taking freestyle strokes in the air with a single arm or collapsing and dangling their fingers toward the floor. Without being too heavy-handed, Mr. Fagan shows that the waters surrounding his “Lighthouse,” as the first section is named, are anything but tranquil.

      Keep reading »

  • Dance Review: Fagan collaboration with Marsalis debuts with fanfare

    Posted on October 2nd, 2012 in

    Garth Fagan and Wynton Marsalis joined forces for their second collaboration, premiering a new work and revitalizing excerpts from a famed repertory piece at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Thursday night to a packed audience that included Brooklyn Nets players and composer Philip Glass.
    The concert celebrated a number of milestones: BAM’s 150th anniversary year, its Next Wave Festival’s 30th anniversary and the end of Garth Fagan Dance’s 40th anniverary celebration. The company will bring the concert to Rochester from Nov. 27 to Dec. 2 at Nazareth College Arts Center (although the Wynton Marsalis Septet’s music will be a recording).

      Keep reading »

  • Two Old Friends Prepare a Three-Part Premiere

    Posted on September 27th, 2012 in Profiles & Interviews | 1

    ROCHESTER — Last week the jazz trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis walked into an office building here that once housed a Knights of Columbus chapter, rode an elevator to a high-ceilinged studio and discovered his septet, a 12-member modern dance company, a giant spatula and a 21-foot-tall woman.

    Mr. Marsalis had a cold, but he wasn’t hallucinating. The studio is the home of Garth Fagan Dance, and Mr. Marsalis was there to rehearse. “Lighthouse/Lightning Rod,” his first collaboration with Mr. Fagan since “Griot New York” in 1991, opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Thursday. The spatula was one of Martin Puryear’s set pieces for “Griot,” excerpts from which fill out the program in Brooklyn. The sculpture of the woman was a conception of a lighthouse by the artist Alison Saar.

      Keep reading »

  • Garth Fagan, Wynton Marsalis pair for new work

    Posted on September 27th, 2012 in Profiles & Interviews

    About 25 years ago, choreographer Garth Fagan was walking down East Avenue and saw something out of the ordinary. The famous jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis was strolling around, looking rather blue. Marsalis had just performed in Rochester and was having a few band quibbles.

    “I picked him up and took him to the studio to see a performance,” says Fagan.

      Keep reading »

  • Live webcast: Wynton Marsalis with Bobby McFerrin and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

    Posted on September 13th, 2012 in Concerts | 2

    Two years after his acclaimed debut at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Bobby McFerrin returns to open our 25th Anniversary Season, performing for the first time with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to watch a live webcast of Bobby McFerrin: My Audio Biography.

      Keep reading »