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Marsalis and JLCO play marathon, with a little help from Basie
It was billed as a “Battle Royale,” but the matchup between the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Count Basie Orchestra on Saturday night turned out to be more love fest than cutting contest. Keep reading »
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U.S. - Cuban love affair continues, via jazz
Long before the U.S. flag rose above the reopened American embassy in Havana last Friday, jazz was linking two feuding nations. Long before President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro went on TV last December to announce a thaw in relations between the countries, jazz musicians from both places nurtured ties that transcended politics. Keep reading »
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Marsalis and JALC in warm surroundings in Skokie
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has performed often in the Chicago area since 1992, the year of its first national tour – when it was called the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and presented a compelling all-Ellington program in Orchestra Hall. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis leads a lively triple-header with orchestra
What’s the difference between a great ensemble and a merely fine one? Perhaps it’s malleability: the gift for adapting quickly to shifting artistic demands. Certainly Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra showed that skill over the weekend in Orchestra Hall, playing three different concerts in quick succession and to striking effect. Any one of the performances would have been memorable. All three pointed to a band that consistently rises to changing aesthetic circumstances.
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Wynton Marsalis reaches out to the young
No event in Orchestra Hall’s jazz season generates greater anticipation or larger audiences than a residency by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
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And none of this year’s three concerts, starting Friday, will make a bigger impact on the future than the Saturday matinee, a Jazz for Young People program. For during the course of this event, Marsalis won’t just play with his formidable ensemble but also will discuss the music, aiming his commentary at young listeners unfamiliar with jazz, as well as those already smitten. -
Wynton Marsalis and JALC concert at Chicago Orchestra Hall
There’s a palpable sense of occasion in the air when the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra returns to Orchestra Hall, and you feel it as soon as you walk into the room.
The presence of so many listeners seated on stage around the band, crowding the terrace area behind it and filling every remaining seat in the house distinguishes this event from most concerts in the grand old venue. Major performances unfold here many nights a week, in other words, but Chicagoans turn these JALC appearances – led by the band’s music director, Wynton Marsalis – into something of a civic occasion.
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Wynton Marsalis’ Pulitzer-winning ‘Blood on the Fields’ returns
Sixteen years ago, newspapers across America riffed on an unexpected theme: For the first time, a jazz composition had won the country’s highest musical honor. “Marsalis swings a Pulitzer” trumpeted USA Today, its message echoing wherever cultural news was reported. Not since Duke Ellington had been snubbed by the Pulitzers in 1965 — prompting two jury members who recommended him for the award to quit — had jazz become so dramatically linked to the award. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis plays homage to Von Freeman
Just moments after Wynton Marsalis took the stage of Orchestra Hall on Tuesday night he addressed a subject on many people’s minds: Chicago tenor saxophonist Von Freeman, who died earlier this month at age 88.
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“He was a legend,” Marsalis told a crowded house, while a memorial service for Freeman was being held across town, at Christ Universal Temple, on South Ashland Avenue. -
A splendid run for Marsalis’ JALC Orchestra – with 1 singer too many
The most haunting moment of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s three-concert Chicago residency came late Friday night, and it barely rose above a whisper. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis heads to Symphony Center for weekend residency
For most of us, turning 50 represents a major personal landmark. For Wynton Marsalis, it’s inevitably a public occasion, if only because for at least two decades he has been the world’s most widely recognized jazz artist. Keep reading »