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Jazz Suite With a Park View; Lincoln Center Unveils Its Columbus Circle Plan
A dance floor with a 50-foot window on Central Park will be the new face of Jazz at Lincoln Center. At a news conference today the organization is to unveil plans for its new home, including what are billed as the world’s first concert halls built especially for jazz Keep reading »
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Marsalis Shows China That Jazz Isn’t Just a Word
In their first 48 hours of music making here, Wynton Marsalis and his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra put on two smooth performances before well-dressed audiences, two educational events for Chinese jazz colleagues and schoolchildren, and two smoking jam sessions with local musicians for a small, ravenous circle of fans. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis: Jazzman on the Run
SOMETIME during the last year, those of us who were on the mailing list of Columbia Records ran for cover. It was raining CD’s by Wynton Marsalis. By the end of 1999, Mr. Marsalis had released some 20 hours of music on 15 CD’s, a heroic effort called ‘‘Swinging Into the 21st’’ that still has not emptied Columbia’s vaults of his material. Keep reading »
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Marsalis’s Stylishly Solid Septet, Feeling Right at Home
When the Wynton Marsalis Septet played the theme of Thelonious Monk’s ‘‘Hackensack’’ on Tuesday night at the Village Vanguard, every quarter of the four-horn front line carried a controlled, distinct weight. Each musician projected a particular volume and tone, and the sum was a fine, calibrated mix. You could hear it all and marvel at the craft in it. Keep reading »
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Marsalis’s Daring Symphonic Step
Wynton Marsalis’s tap didn’t turn off in 1999. Eight new discs bear his name, ranging from new extended jazz works to rearranged Jelly Roll Morton and Thelonious Monk; he has a seven-CD boxed set of live material; six months of the year were spent touring worldwide and playing the music of Duke Ellington. Keep reading »
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Just the Best In Ellington’s Sacred Works
The church of Duke Ellington admitted many denominations: gospel, opera, tap and interpretive dance, European orchestral music and hot, small-group percussiveness. His three Sacred Concerts, given their premieres in 1965, 1968 and 1973, weren’t jazz Masses: he insisted on a difference between talking to God and, as he described his own efforts, ‘‘people talking to people about God.’’ So he took his jazz conception, complete with elements of a nightclub show, into cathedrals. Keep reading »
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An Ellington of Short Takes
The career of Duke Ellington is wonderfully logical; each successive step brings more resources to the music, so that it becomes richer and more varied, sometimes in surprising ways. Keep reading »
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Ellington At 100: Reveling in Life’s Majesty
IN Duke Ellington’s world, people are smiling, they are dancing and they are making love. They’re having a good time because his music’s most basic concern is uplift of the human spirit. It’s a music that celebrates freedom of expression, freedom of choice. That’s why we love it. It wants us to love being ourselves and to revel in the majesty of life. Keep reading »
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A Jazz Success Story with a Tinge of the Blues: At Lincoln Center, Defining the Canon Draws Fire
The scene at the Supper Club on West 47th Street seemed to evoke the glory days of jazz—an ebullient swing band playing classic Ellington tunes as dancers in period costumes rocketed around the dance floor. Keep reading »
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Jazz at the White House: A Metaphor for Democracy (and a Help to the Boss)
It was everywhere, rustling through conversations the way a breeze moves through trees, in the smirks and jokes of some, in the extended, slightly nervous ovation the President and Mrs. Clinton received as they walked into the East Room of the White House on Friday night for a Millennium lecture on jazz. Keep reading »