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Jazz Swings Back To Tradition
THE CROWD OUTSIDE SWEET Basil, on a Monday not long ago, is so large and so eager that even jaded Greenwich Village strollers stop to ask who’s playing inside the jazz club. David Murray and Wynton Marsalis, they are told; that’s why the place is packed. That made several Mondays in a row that the David Murray Big Band drew full houses, playing a stack of new compositions that cut exultantly across the history of jazz. Keep reading »
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MARSALIS: Jazz meets classics
LINCOLN Centre, New York City, June, 1983. Wynton Marsalis, a 21-year-old trumpet player was sharing the bill with Miles Davis, a man whom Marsalis had admired at one time, but whose own playing has deteriorated over the years. Davis came out to the cheers of the converted. His band droned through an hour of mushy jazz-rock rhythms while he filled the air with trumpet notes, most of them unmemorable. Keep reading »
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Plenty on the horn
“I’m gonna be who I am regardless of who I listen to,” says Wynton Marsalis, the young trumpeter who has been setting both the jazz and classical music worlds on their ears with his apparently boundless talent and technique. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis emerges full-blown
At 17, Wynton Marsalis of New Orleans was a year shy of the required age to play classical music at Tanglewood. Having performed the Haydn Trumpet Concerto with the New Orleans Philharmonic at 14 was impressive enough, but it took more than that to beat the rules and get into the prestigious festival. Keep reading »
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A cool Cat Who Plays It Smart
Wynton Marsalis, the sensational 21-year-old jazz trumpeter from New Orleans – he’s a cool one. On the night of April 23 during a concert at New York’s Town Hall he was looking directly into the face of the man with whom he was playing music – it was Sonny Rollins, the tenor saxophonist – when the unexpected happened. Keep reading »
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Musical Genius Reaches Top At 21
WYNTON Marsalis does not look like a messiah. He is affiliated with no religious cult and wears elegant, conservatively tailored suits rather than sandals and flowing robes. Keep reading »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »