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Wynton Rebels by Playing It Straight : Marsalis Scores the Garth Fagan Dance Company, Funk-Free
Don’t let the tailored suit and natty tie fool you. Wynton Marsalis sees himself as a rebel. Arriving in town this week for three performances of his “Griot New York” ballet score with the Garth Fagan Dance Company, Marsalis doesn’t understand why he is viewed by many as a jazz traditionalist. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis, THE PROFESSOR OF SWING
City after city, night after night, it’s the same. The concert ends, the houselights come up. Slowly, as if heeding some selectively intelligible signal, come the kids - _how do they always know to come?_ - one or two to a half dozen, lugging instrument cases. Keep reading »
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American Majesty
It’s an attractive idea. There in the great fastness of American music, in the still, tranquil centre, stands not a singer or a rapper or a guitarist but a trumpet player. He has a lot on his mind. Great issues such as integration, education and development crowd in on him. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis: Adding It All To Jazz
WHEN THE Wynton Marsalis Septet visited Wolf Trap last August, the 31-year-old bandleader was easy to spot even from the lawn in his dazzling all-white suit. His trumpet was also easy to pick out with its diamond-sharp statements of melodic themes. It soon became clear, however, that his less-famous bandmates were essential to the exhilarating group improvisations, as they traded phrases with Marsalis as equals. Keep reading »
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Don’t play Duke Ellington like Haydn Trumpet Concerto, says Wynton Marsalis
As the first musician ever to have been signed simultaneously to the jazz and classical divisions of Columbia Records, Wynton Marsalis is intimately familiar with the differences and similarities between the two worlds. We spoke to him over the phone, during a tour stop in Boston, and asked what he thought about treating jazz like classical music. Keep reading »
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Young man with a horn
A couple of months ago I got a phone call from a writer working on an article about Jazz at Lincoln Center. The program, announced in the spring of 1991, has gotten a lot of media attention. It’s undeniable that Lincoln Center’s giving jazz a regular home has “legitimized” it in the eyes of some cultural elites, including foundations and philanthropists, here in the land of its birth-one of the last places the music has won that respect. Keep reading »
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Wynton’s Decade: Creating a Canon
Ten years ago, young players in crispy pressed suits were not yet being signed by major labels; Lincoln Center in New York was not yet presenting an 11-month jazz season; the Ravinia Festival near Chicago had not yet begun its ground-breaking Jazz. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis Versus Elvis, Queen Latifah, and Madonna
Every twentieth-century generation has had a jazz trumpet player to call its own. The twenties had Louis Armstrong, the forties, Dizzy Gillespie, and the sixties, Miles Davis. For the 1980s and into the ‘90s, Wynton Marsalis occupies that position. Since blasting onto the scene at 18 years of age with Art Blakey’s acclaimed band, the Jazz Messengers, in the late 1970s, he has become emblematic of the young players who take jazz seriously. Keep reading »
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The Young Lions’ Roar : Wynton Marsalis and the ‘Neoclassical’ Lincoln Center Orchestra
Halfway through condemning the electronic jazz-funk Miles Davis played in his later years, Wynton Marsalis stops himself. “Don’t print that, all right?” the trumpeter says suddenly. “When (Miles) was alive, I made it clear what I felt about what he was doing, and now that he’s dead I don’t feel I have to say any more about it. Keep reading »
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Marsalis trumpets virtues of early recognition
At only 30 years of age, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has already been called an “elder statesman of jazz.” It is a label he disputes, saying he is simply grateful to have achieved acclaim so young. Keep reading »