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A New Orleans Jazzman Gets the Marsalis Treatment
The work of the New Orleans drummer and composer James Black sounds as if it was written after the 1950’s, but that’s about as far as you can guess. Because Black was a drummer, he was particularly sensitive to rhythm-section clichés; some of his tunes used diabolical time-signature changes, but his melodies flowed through them in such a way that those changes didn’t trip up the listener. Keep reading »
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Wynton and Ellis Marsalis play the music of James Black
For five nights, from May 27 to 31 at Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, Jazz at Lincoln Center will celebrate the music of James Black (1940-1988), the trailblazin drummer and composer, whose music remains largely unknown outside of his native New Orleans.
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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 »