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Wynton Marsalis Simplifies Matters
In all outward signs, Wynton Marsalis’s new album, “The Magic Hour,” represents a change in his career. It’s on a new label: last year, Mr. Marsalis signed with Blue Note after more than 20 years and 30 jazz records with Columbia/Sony. It also presents a new band, at least new to most listeners, who are used to the septet he has played with for more than a decade. But most strikingly, it is a statement about simplicity, a virtue that has often escaped him. Keep reading »
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Bill Clinton touts musical greats
While his former second banana, Al Gore, was stumping for Howard Dean last week, Bill Clinton was busy endorsing John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. Those are just a few of the late jazz legends whose names came up Wednesday night at a symposium that paired the former president and sometime saxophone player with the rather more accomplished trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center, where Marsalis is artistic director, the panel discussion addressed the relationship between jazz, a native American art form, and our politics and culture. Keep reading »
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Marsalis, Clinton and Others Dissect Jazz at Symposium
Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, has talked for some years about his desire to gather an intellectual community around jazz.
Last night at the Walter Reade Theater at the center, Mr. Marsalis and his organization scored a coup in the name of intellectualism and publicity: a symposium, with an invitation-only audience of about 200, on the subject of jazz and American democracy, including the former president and part-time saxophonist Bill Clinton.
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Marsalis hinting at introspective change of pace
Chicagoans have heard trumpeter Wynton Marsalis fronting all manner of ensembles, from the choral-orchestral forces that performed his oratorio “Blood on the Fields” to the radiant septet that played his devotional instrumental suite “In This House, On This Morning.” Keep reading »
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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!” Keep reading »
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A New Orleans Jazzman Gets the Marsalis Treatment
The work of the New Orleans drummer and composer James Black sounds as if it was written after the 1950’s, but that’s about as far as you can guess. Because Black was a drummer, he was particularly sensitive to rhythm-section clichés; some of his tunes used diabolical time-signature changes, but his melodies flowed through them in such a way that those changes didn’t trip up the listener. Keep reading »
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Marsalis, jazz band parlay brassy sound into gold
Collectively, the 15-member Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, playing Monday night at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, ran as though it is a machine driven by a single, powerful velvet piston. That’s what the great bands were about, everyone working for the collective good. Keep reading »
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Working Together, Taking Different Roads
It’s true: the Marsalises have been overexposed to the ends of the earth. One might have looked at the enormous profile on Wynton Marsalis in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly, noticed the recent PBS special about the family, then seen a full-family concert coming up and rightly wondered why nobody else in jazz was apparently worth paying attention to.
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The Rhythm of Flamenco Wins American Hearts
The latest of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s excursions into foreign music was ‘‘Flamenco Nights,’’ Thursday’s concert at Alice Tully Hall, and the connecting of flamenco to jazz went off well, if a little stiff-jointed at the American end. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis “All Rise” Son ...
The ambition of Wynton Marsalis’s epic composition, “All Rise,” can be measured by the sheer number and variety of the people gathered to perform it. The two-CD set involves the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and three separate choral groups: the Paul Smith Singers, the Northridge Singers and Baltimore’s Morgan State University Choir. Keep reading »