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Interview with Wynton Marsalis Musical Director, trumpet
Really, soloing is just like talking. You don’t know exactly what you’re going to say but you have an idea and then, as it starts to come out of your mouth, you start to organize it. You even organize the sound of a sentence as you go along. You give, you take some and you give some. And even when you’re listening to somebody, you’re waiting for the time for them to stop, or even if they don’t stop, you’re waiting for a certain moment. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis: Interview by Ted Panken
The Reigning Genius of Jazz to his admirers, the Emperor With No Clothes to his debunkers, Wynton Marsalis has attracted public attention and provoked ferociously divergent responses like few musicians in the music’s history. Since his emergence in the early 1980’s as a trumpet virtuoso and composer-bandleader, the result of Marsalis’ choice and treatment of material and his penchant for salty public statements is a public persona akin to a massive lightning rod or magnet that absorbs and repels the roiling opinions and attitudes informing the contemporary Jazz zeitgeist. Keep reading »
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Changing the Beat
New York’s Lincoln Center. For 34 years, home to the world of classical music. Now there’s a new sound in the house. (music) It’s a new sound for Lincoln Center but not a new sound–like Duke Ellington’s New Orleans Suite. Keep reading »
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Don’t play Duke Ellington like Haydn Trumpet Concerto, says Wynton Marsalis
As the first musician ever to have been signed simultaneously to the jazz and classical divisions of Columbia Records, Wynton Marsalis is intimately familiar with the differences and similarities between the two worlds. We spoke to him over the phone, during a tour stop in Boston, and asked what he thought about treating jazz like classical music. Keep reading »
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Wynton’s Decade: Creating a Canon
Ten years ago, young players in crispy pressed suits were not yet being signed by major labels; Lincoln Center in New York was not yet presenting an 11-month jazz season; the Ravinia Festival near Chicago had not yet begun its ground-breaking Jazz. Keep reading »
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NEW RELEASES : Eclectic ‘Blues’ From Wynton Marsalis
In the introduction to the incredibly prolix liner notes by Stanley Crouch, this three-CD set is called a “blues cycle.” A better description: a richly rewarding series of compositions, all but three by Marsalis, notable for the evocative, suspensefully moody character of the music rather than any strong blues essence. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis, Immersed in the Deep Blues
Some 100 years after its development, the blues and its distinctly American tonality still roll on. The impact has been astounding: a humble 12-bar, 3-chord repeating cycle, made popular by the repressed black minority, has given definition to some of the most important musical developments of the 20th century. Keep reading »
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Taking Back the Blues: A Conversation with Wynton Marsalis
In the packed-dirt courtyard behind Stanford University’s Frost Amphitheater, Wynton Marsalis entertains a crowd of hearty fans who have ventured backstage to meet him. The trumpeter, who an hour earlier led his band through a concert of grand and, at times, commanding music is polite and disarmingly quick-witted. Keep reading »
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Wynton looks at roots of Jazz
Growing up in New Orleans, jazz trumpet phenom Wynton Marsalis took the bubbling local music scene for granted. Now, 10 years into Marsalis’s high-profile career, the music he is playing serves as a reminder of the importance – and continued vibrancy – of the Crescent City’s storied jazz and blues tradition. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis, His Sextet And Some Unorthodox Blues
Last night Wynton Marsalis played the blues. It wasn’t your down-home, garden variety. Marsalis, a jazzman who went to the Juilliard School of Music, brought to bear his massive classical chops on an eclectic set of material that ranged from Strayhorn to Schoenberg. Keep reading »