-
Ahmad Jamal Strikes up the Orchestra
Can this really be the fifth season of Jazz at Lincoln Center at Rose Hall? Already there are young people filling seats at the Rose Theater who probably feel that JaLC has been around forever, and even take it for granted. They’d probably be amazed to hear that listeners in the 1940s thought it was a big deal whenever jazz made it to one of the major concert halls, like Carnegie or Town Hall, and probably couldn’t imagine a world in which American music was accorded the same respect as symphonies and chamber works. (It had only been a few generations since ragtime was condemned by the pope and jazz itself was officially denounced by the city of New Orleans, where it was created.) So if young fans want to act as though Rose Hall — the only jazz-specific multiplex in the country, if not the world — is no big deal, then that’s a good thing, an illustration of how far we’ve come. Keep reading »
-
A Pianist Fully in Charge of Everything He Surveys
Ahmad Jamal stood up repeatedly from the piano at the Rose Theater on Thursday night, almost always during a song. His reasons had to do with the act of management, which plays an important role in his music. Sometimes he turned to face the rest of his rhythm section, as if to observe its progress or pass silent judgment. Sometimes he was making an announcement, or cuing the big band onstage. It was the kickoff for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new season, but the timing felt almost incidental. Mr. Jamal had the floor, unequivocally, and he wasn’t interested in behaving like a guest. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl
Wynton Marsalis describes the big jazz band as “the American orchestra.” It’s an intriguing and, in many ways, definitive identification of the instrumental collective that has been a foundation ensemble of American jazz and popular music for more than 80 years. Like the classical orchestra, it is an ensemble that has served as the expressive musical vehicle for a particular culture—in this case, American rather than European. The performance by Marsalis’ 15-piece Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday night was a dynamic, living color display of the multifaceted meaning of his description. Keep reading »
-
Marsalis Leads The Faithful
This past weekend, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, which is generally regarded as New York’s oldest Afro-American religious institution, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall was transformed into a kind of spiritual multiplex. Gospel choirs issued forth from every performance space, and also in the public atrium in between (where macaroni and cheese was served, presumably to evoke the provisions one might find at a Sunday school picnic). What artistic director Wynton Marsalis usually calls the House of Swing had become the House of Prayer. Keep reading »
-
Marsalis Mass Honors Harlem Church
A young institution pays tribute to a venerable one with Wynton Marsalis’s “Abyssinian 200: A Celebration.” It was written for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, founded in 1988, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a bulwark of African-American New York City. The orchestra introduced the work last week at its own Rose Theater. Keep reading »
-
Marsalis summons the spirit
In the early days of jazz in New Orleans, Saturday night was the flip side of Sunday morning. The call-and-response dynamic among a band’s players was inspired by preacher and congregation; trumpeters emulated the bent-note wails and chants of gospel song. Keep reading »
-
Review - Wynton Marsalis: Standards and Ballads
The complaint that some jazz folks have with Wynton Marsalis is that, way too soon in his career, he became an outspoken proponent of all that was old-fashioned and conventional. Keep reading »
-
Reviews and video from the first part of Ellington Tour
As you know, Wynton and the JLCO are touring USA to perform the music of Duke Ellington…Now the band is playing in California (Check the next dates).
Keep reading » -
Wynton Marsalis, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary (2008): Wynton in the 21st century
Only a few jazz musicians have actually changed the course of the music: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis (twice, maybe three times) and Ornette Coleman undeniably reset the compass—and Wynton Marsalis certainly did. Keep reading »
-
Sounds That Remain Miles Ahead
In the best of Gil Evans’s work, nothing signifies a finished style. Achieving his kind of openness took stubborn drive: The ease with which his arranging and composing came to connect Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Kurt Weill, Claude Thornhill, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Charles Mingus and Jimi Hendrix didn’t indicate a path of least resistance. His work, from the 1940s to the 1980s, represents jazz’s thousand limbs, its endless reach. Keep reading »