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Marsalis’ Gamble
With a cast of roughly two dozen musicians, a running time of nearly three hours and a forthcoming recording that will fill a three-CD boxed set, it is the single biggest project of Wynton Marsalis’ career to date. Keep reading »
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Tapestry in Jazz
Wynton Marsalis looked uncharacteristically apprehensive when he stepped on stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Thursday night. “I’m nervous,” he acknowledged, looking out at the audience still streaming into seats for the West Coast premiere of his jazz oratorio, “Blood on the Fields.” Keep reading »
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The Freedom to Create
Wynton Marsalis learned plenty while writing ‘Blood on the Fields,’ a jazz oratorio reflecting on the slave era. But perhaps the most important lesson was about himself. Keep reading »
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Exuberant Motion And Rollicking Jazz
ONE of the most brilliant conceits of Lincoln Center Festival ‘96 was the pairing of Judith Jamison, the artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Keep reading »
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A Marsalis Sampler, Both Brief and Complex
Connected to Judith Jamison’s fast-moving choreography, Wynton Marsalis’s 30-minute score for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s ‘‘Sweet Release,’’ performed Wednesday night at the New York State Theater, had little room for the kind of ecstasy implied in its title. In its favor, the piece felt more like a symphony fiendishly edited to fit on one side of an LP. Keep reading »
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From Duke Ellington, Themes for the Movies
Immersing oneself in the music of Duke Ellington gives the sense that he did everything that could possibly be done in jazz. His body of work, which starts in 1923 and ends in 1974, is so loaded with ideas that new movement after new movement in jazz could be sustained by continuing down avenues where he ventured for just a few blocks but then went on to something else. Mr. Ellington was restless, and it made his music fertile. Keep reading »
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Swing-Era Orchestrations Handled With Assurance
So much is changing so rapidly in the institutional jazz world that Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Golden Pen,” Saturday’s concert of swing-era arrangements, sounded like a fairly normal programming ploy. Five years ago, the idea to display a series of often-brilliant arrangements might have seemed radical; it is now rare but accepted practice, and the pleasure gained is less from novelty and more from the sensuousness of the music itself. Keep reading »
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The Pied Piper of Jazz
The Pied Piper of Jazz : You can call Wynton Marsalis an accomplished musician, a great teacher or a respected bandleader, but his friends just call him Hoghead. Keep reading »
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The Battle of the Bands, Part Two
Silence played a big part in the Battle of the Bands, a showdown between the jazz orchestras of Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center on Friday night at Avery Fisher Hall. The concert, in its second year as part of the JVC Jazz Festival, featured two orchestras at their peak. Keep reading »
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Stop Nitpicking a Genius
IN THE OLD MASONIC HALL BEING USED AS A RECORDING STUDIO, WYNTON Marsalis tells the band to take a 10-minute break, steps down from the podium, comes over and gives me a hug. We sit down in the old theater seats. Keep reading »