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Review: LSO/Pappano, Barbican
Of all our orchestras, the London Symphony Orchestra is the closest to America in its brazen, sassy sound, and it has always been welcoming to American composers and conductors. Keep reading »
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Five stars for Wynton Marsalis’s dazzlingTrumpet Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra
With Simon Rattle having departed and plans for a new concert hall in the City of London long shelved, the London Symphony Orchestra could be forgiven for feeling down in the dumps. Instead, the announcement of its 2024-25 season showed all the signs of an organisation powering forwards. Keep reading »
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Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Barbican — a century of jazz history
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra signalled its balance of orchestral jazz spectacle and nightclub intimacy from the start. A fanfare of trumpets was answered by a sheen of reeds before a froth of swapped phrases unfolded over springy walking-bass swing. Keep reading »
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Jazz review: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the Barbican
There was a full complement of hyper-sophisticated technicians in the ranks (all of them male, incidentally), but not for the first time the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra left that nagging feeling of listening to a one-man band. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis’ JLCO Red Hot & Retro At The Barbican
The 1938 Carnegie Hall concert that brought together Benny Goodman’s hit-making orchestra and stars from the Ellington and Basie bands was a game-changing moment for 20th century America, both artistically and socially. Carnegie Hall, a temple of classical music, was opening its doors to a new world. It was also lending its stage to a glimpse of social harmony that – though yet to be fulfilled, 80 years later – was nonetheless a high-profile showcase for white/African-American artistic liaisons that were inconceivable to many in the 1930s. Keep reading »
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New Yorkers salute groundbreaking night with glittering eloquence
New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra amble on to the Barbican’s stage every couple of years and are always greeted by delighted audiences as if they were long-lost relatives bearing gifts. Tuesday’s curtain-raiser to the jazz orchestra’s current residency was a typically graceful blend of swing grooves that ticked over like an immense and perfectly balanced engine, ensemble parts played with languid rigour, and concise improv that both embellishes compositions and cherishes their shapes. The night’s theme was the tightly drilled but expansive 30s big-band jazz of Benny Goodman – the most ecstatically popular western dance phenomenon until the coming of rock’n’roll – which those long-honed JLCO virtues could hardly have fitted better. Keep reading »
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Bernstein at 100 @ Barbican Hall, London
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra is one of the Barbican’s International Associates, and this concert of music by Leonard Bernstein, whose centenary falls this year, showed exactly why it enjoys the same official standing as the New York Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus. Keep reading »
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Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra to Make Its International Debut at London’s The Barbican
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra (JLYCO) makes its international debut at the Barbican in London, England on February 27- March 1, 2018. As part of the bi-annual Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis residency at the Barbican, 22 NYC-area high school jazz musicians will spend a week abroad for a music and cultural exchange with public performances, workshops, and jam sessions. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis: trumpeting controversial ideas of classicism
In June 1986, Wynton Marsalis and Miles Davis were booked to play at the inaugural Vancouver international jazz festival, when the 24-year-old trumpeter took it upon himself to gatecrash Davis’s gig, trumpet in hand and ready to play. Keep reading »
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Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Barbican, London — ‘Flamboyant’
Wynton Marsalis promised that the final evening of JLCO’s three-night Barbican residency would “capture the impact of George Gershwin’s music on the jazz tradition”. This was accomplished in flamboyant style. The trumpeter’s introductions were as concisely eloquent as his few short solos, while JLCO’s ability to conjure earlier jazz styles remains unrivalled. Over the evening they referenced late ragtime, cool-school modernism and most points in between. Keep reading »