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Wayne Shorter/JLCO review – bravura and cool as jazz giant comes to town
Wynton Marsalis’s spirited and long-running Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra often devote their shows to the legacies of pioneers, late or living – but they could hardly have picked a more charismatic guest for the opening night of their current Barbican residency. The work of Wayne Shorter, the 82 year-old saxophonist with a sound as unique as a thumbprint and one of jazz’s greatest small-band composers, was hailed on Thursday in a series of offbeat mini-concertos in which he was principal improvising soloist. Keep reading »
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Wayne Shorter with JLCO | London, Barbican
I first saw the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2003. Wynton Marsalis and his colleagues changed the way I heard music and the centre of my musical universe. How could this concert compare? Keep reading »
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Wayne Shorter and Wynton Marsalis with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Barbican
Wayne Shorter and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra – that sounds like a dream pairing. Shorter, now 82, is one of the true greats, a saxophonist and composer with an enchanting and unpredictable approach that makes him instantly recognisable. Keep reading »
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When Shorter and Marsalis brought the house down
This encounter between famed saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter and Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra was bound to be exciting – but also potentially problematic. Wayne Shorter shot to fame in the late Fifties and Sixties when he played with Miles Davis and Art Blakey, and penned some immortal standards. Since then, like some jazz Ulysses, he has roamed into distant seas with a trusty band of colleagues, creating vast visionary pieces that can play for an hour at a stretch. His eye is on the future. Keep reading »
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They took me in like I was their son’: Wynton Marsalis on jazz’s great tradition
At the end of his performance at the Barbican with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis made a little speech. The next piece, he announced, was a number that Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers used to play. Marsalis then recalled how he himself had played with the Jazz Messengers as an 18-year-old trumpet prodigy. He described how much he had learned from the drummer, who was then approaching 60, and especially about ‘the sacrifices you have to make to play this music’. Then the band roared into ‘Free for All’ by Wayne Shorter.
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Wynton Marsalis Trumpets Youth, Musical Diversity At Annual London Residency
The solo played by U.S. jazzman Wynton Marsalis to close his now-annual residency at London’s Barbican this week was a rare personal moment in what was otherwise a master class in sharing the limelight.
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In lieu of a full-fledged encore with his 14-strong Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO), Marsalis entertained with a small combo, delighting an already bouncing crowd with swooping scales of trumpet. -
Wynton Marsalis/Sachal Jazz Ensemble review – lively east-west fling
Wynton Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra joined Pakistan’s legendary movie-soundtrack band, the Sachal Jazz Ensemble, for a lively east-west fling in the closing stages of the trumpeter’s UK tour. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis’s Swing Symphony, Barbican, review
The LSO and virtuoso trumpeter Wynton Marslis’s Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra combined for a fitting climax to the latter’s Barbican residency, writes Ivan Hewett. Keep reading »
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The Telegraph: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra/Congo Square, Barbican, review
Wynton Marsalis, the celebrated American trumpeter, composer and band-leader, likes to think big. For him jazz is virtuoso musicality, uproarious enjoyment, spiritual edification and cultural memory, all rolled into one. To fulfil that vision he’s created several ambitious multi-movement suites for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
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One of them, Congo Square, opened the orchestra’s current residency at the Barbican. -
Evening Standard: Congo Square: Wynton Marsalis & the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Barbican Hall
Congo Square is a quiet spot in north-central New Orleans, near Louis Armstrong Park. Tourists take pictures of Louis’s statue there before lunching in the French Quarter. Little over a century earlier, however, it had a very different function.
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