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Team Marsalis: All in The Family
Jason Marsalis looks serious as he fiddles with his drum sticks at Manhattan’s Apple Store. He’s sitting at his trap set, paces away from his dad, pianist Ellis, getting ready to hit. But then again, Jason often looks serious. Perhaps the snap he brings to his music demands it ... or perhaps not. As the father and son start to ignite with bassist Jason Stewart, the drummer begins to get his grin on. The spry way he delivers his swing pretty much demands a smile or two. Goading his dad’s glide over the keys, he helps bring an elan to the room. The Marsalises have a way of quickly connecting. Keep reading »
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Wynton on Downbeat: Jazz is life music
In the past thirty years, I have had the good fortune to teach thousands of bands and an incalculable number of students in diverse settings. Though each situation is unique, students share many of the same concerns in pursuit of a more profound relationship with music and with life through music. Every style of music presents distinct challenges which demand the development of different skills. Jazz requires creativity, communication and community.
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Bandstand Democracy - Downbeat December 2008
The score is in 4/4,” said Wynton Marsalis as he shifted his feet in time to the accented triplets that seem never to stop running through his head. He was simultaneously in the midst of a rehearsal with his orchestra and Ahmad Jamal for the Jazz at Lincoln Center season program opener, and a standing chess game with his onstage wingman, saxophonist Walter Blanding, Jr., which has been four years in the making Keep reading »
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Wynton wins Downbeat’s 73rd Annual Readers Poll as Trumpeter of the Year
Downbeat Magazine has just released its 73rd Annual Readers Poll and Wynton won for Trumpeter of The Year with 326 votes.
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The results of the readers’ poll are published in the December issue with a two pages interview to Wynton. Below you can find a screen shot of December Issue with the poll and the interview. -
Downbeat: Wynton’s Empire
It’s the Wynton Marsalis you rarely see. Dressed casually – wire-rim glasses, an untucked blue shirt, jeans and gray-white running shoes – he looks relaxed in the Right Track recording studio in New York. He and pianist Eric Lewis, bassist Carlos Henriquez and drummer Ali Jackson huddle as if they could be discussing strategy for an upcoming four-on-four basketball game. But this is play time of a different sort: rhythm talk in preparation for take 14 of a new Marsalis composition, “Free To Be”, a song with a sunny bounce and syncopated skip. Keep reading »
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Marathon Man. Anything but Conventional
The phone won’t quit ringing, the front door keeps swinging open and the parade of visitors never seems to stop. The scene, however, is not Grand Central Station. But it’s perhaps the second busiest spot in midtown Manhattan: Wynton Marsalis’ high-rise apartment near Lincoln Center, where he directs the most sweeping jazz performance program in the country, if not the planet. Keep reading »
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Talkin’ trumpeters with Wynton Marsalis, part II
In our first installment of “Talkin’ Trumpeters With Wynton Marsalis” (May ‘98), we gave the trumpeter an opportunity to accentuate the positive aspects of his fellow hornblowers. His initial list covered Jon Faddis, Terence Blanchard, Wallace Roney, Nicholas Payton, Marcus Printup, Roy Hargrove and Russell Gunn. We ended with a brief mention of Ryan Kisor, a section man in several big bands and repertory orchestras, including Marsalis’ Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Keep reading »
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Jazz musician of the year: Wynton Marsalis
If everything had gone according to plan, Wynton Marsalis would have taken a long, deep breath in 1997, stepping out of the public eye for a sorely needed sabbatical. Keep reading »
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Blood Brothers
SLAVERY: NOW THAT’S A THEME TO SINK YOUR TEETH INTO. WYNTON MARSALIS THOUGHT SO, and he has - emotionally, mentally, spiritually and musically. With his current “epic oratorio” Blood On The Fields, featuring the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and singers Miles Griffith, Cassandra Wilson and Jon Hendricks, the intrepid Marsalis has taken a personal look into one of the most ignominious chapters in our nation’s history Keep reading »
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My home is the road
Take your time.” That’s what Wynton Marsalis always says to the musicians on his bandstand. At a New York City recording session) for his acclaimed big-band suite, _Blood On The Fields_, he reminds vocal soloist Miles Griffith to do just that during the work’s moving climax. Keep reading »