-
Sacred jazz: Reflections on a rare performance of Marsalis’ ‘Abyssinian Mass’
Since its beginnings, jazz has been draped in the image of sin. Because the music emerged, in part, in the bordellos of New Orleans’ Storyville vice district at the turn of the previous century, the world has viewed jazz as embodying the illicit. Keep reading »
-
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra review: Wynton Marsalis and friends take on ‘Jazz Ambassadors’
You rarely see Orchestra Hall as packed as it was on Friday night, even the terrace seating behind the stage jammed with listeners. But that’s become a kind of norm for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which long ago made Orchestra Hall a “second home,” in the words of JALC managing and artistic director Wynton Marsalis. Keep reading »
-
Back from South Africa, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra gears up for Chicago
It practically has become a cultural rite in Chicago: Every year or so, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis returns here, often performing two nights in Orchestra Hall and fanning out across the city by day to teach young people. Keep reading »
-
Marsalis and JLCO celebrate Morton and Lewis
Let no one doubt that Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra aim to educate as well as entertain. That much was inescapable from their residency over the weekend in Orchestra Hall, where Marsalis and friends kicked off Symphony Center’s jazz series with rigorous examinations of the work of two jazz giants. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center celebrate 30 years of spreading the music
When Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra swing into Chicago next week, they won’t just be kicking off a three-concert residency in Orchestra Hall. They’ll also be celebrating two landmark anniversaries: 25 years since the band made its Chicago debut on that same stage (in a far-reaching program celebrating the music of Duke Ellington) and 30 years since Jazz at Lincoln Center began to emerge as an institution. Keep reading »
-
Radical ideas reap rewards as CSO, Jazz at Lincoln Center mingle
What happens when two great orchestras — one jazz, one classical — share a stage and a score? Previously unencountered sounds can occur, as they did in abundance Friday night in Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center, where the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra appeared en masse. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis and JLCO colleagues swing their own tunes at Symphony Center
We’ve known for a long time that the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra stands as an ensemble of virtuosos. But that term generally refers to the level at which musicians play their instruments. In the case of the JLCO members, though, it also signifies the way they wield their pens. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis’ “Concerto in D” revels in Americana
Wynton Marsalis long ago established his fluency in multiple musical languages, jazz and classical chief among them. But blues, gospel, spirituals, tango, African chant and other idioms also course through Marsalis’ large works, such as the symphonic-choral “All Rise,” the sanctified “In This House, On This Morning” and the vocal-orchestral epic “Blood on the Fields” (the first jazz composition to win a Pulitzer Prize, in 1997). Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis, violin virtuosa talk about their U.S. premiere work at Ravinia
So what is America’s most prominent and powerful jazzman doing writing a classical violin concerto? In fact, the Violin Concerto that Wynton Marsalis composed for Scottish violin virtuosa Nicola Benedetti, which will receive its American premiere with her as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on next Tuesday night at Ravinia, is the latest in a series of works that the multi-talented trumpeter, composer, educator and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center has written for classical symphony orchestra. Keep reading »
-
Wynton Marsalis’ expression of faith: ‘The Abyssinian Mass’
It’s a theme that trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has considered deeply and often in his career as composer: faith. With “The Abyssinian Mass,” a three-disc set that Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will release Friday, the composer returns to the subject, in expansive form. Keep reading »