-
The Kennedy Center Honors: The Grand Prize
Last night’s Kennedy Center Honors gala paid tribute to the artistic journey. Sure, it celebrated playwright Edward Albee, composer and instrumentalist Benny Carter, country music star Johnny Cash, actor Jack Lemmon and dancer Maria Tallchief. Keep reading »
-
Exuberant Motion And Rollicking Jazz
ONE of the most brilliant conceits of Lincoln Center Festival ‘96 was the pairing of Judith Jamison, the artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Keep reading »
-
A Marsalis Sampler, Both Brief and Complex
Connected to Judith Jamison’s fast-moving choreography, Wynton Marsalis’s 30-minute score for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s ‘‘Sweet Release,’’ performed Wednesday night at the New York State Theater, had little room for the kind of ecstasy implied in its title. In its favor, the piece felt more like a symphony fiendishly edited to fit on one side of an LP. Keep reading »
-
From Duke Ellington, Themes for the Movies
Immersing oneself in the music of Duke Ellington gives the sense that he did everything that could possibly be done in jazz. His body of work, which starts in 1923 and ends in 1974, is so loaded with ideas that new movement after new movement in jazz could be sustained by continuing down avenues where he ventured for just a few blocks but then went on to something else. Mr. Ellington was restless, and it made his music fertile. Keep reading »
-
Veteran Saxophonists Show More Than Age
Against the blank canvas of a neutral rhythm section, eight of the better improvisers in jazz grappled in a cutting contest at Avery Fisher Hall on Friday. Called “Battle Royale: Trumpets and Tenors 2,” it was the public face of what the writer Albert Murray has named “antagonistic cooperation,” where musicians, challenged by their peers, ape pushed into further excellence. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis Presents His Spin on World of Jazz
“Jazz,” Wynton Marsalis says in the opening scenes of Bravo’s “South Bank Show,” “prizes individuality. It teaches you how to project your personality, and how to discover the positive and negative things about yourself.” Keep reading »
-
Swing-Era Orchestrations Handled With Assurance
So much is changing so rapidly in the institutional jazz world that Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Golden Pen,” Saturday’s concert of swing-era arrangements, sounded like a fairly normal programming ploy. Five years ago, the idea to display a series of often-brilliant arrangements might have seemed radical; it is now rare but accepted practice, and the pleasure gained is less from novelty and more from the sensuousness of the music itself. Keep reading »
-
Marsalis and His Band Rework Monk and Others
Wynton Marsalis reconvened his septet, added the clarinetist Michael White and performed the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Thelonious Monk and his own music for a show at Alice Tully Hall on Saturday night. It was hard not to get the idea that there wasn’t much ambition in the program, which is part of the Jazz at Lincoln Center series; Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis, Top Tutor
It’s precisely because trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis is equally comfortable in classical music and jazz—he studied at both the Juilliard and Blakey schools—that he’s so adept hosting “Marsalis on Music,” a four-part music appreciation program aimed at young listeners. It airs on Channel 26 tonight at 8 and the next three Mondays. Keep reading »
-
Joys of a Primer On Tempo and Tone
Today’s tax-slashing politicians, all too eager to cut school and other budgets, tend to think of the arts as frills, if not downright tools of subversion. Students in public schools, especially in urban areas, are getting less and less grounding in the arts, and often none at all. Keep reading »