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For Basie, Red Hot Blues
The blues settled into Alice Tully Hall on Thursday night with the arrival of the singer Dennis Rowland. Mr. Rowland was there to play the role of Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s show, ‘‘Swingin’ the Blues for Count Basie.’’ 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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Veteran Saxophonists Show More Than Age
Against the blank canvas of a neutral rhythm section, eight of the better improvisers in jazz grappled in a cutting contest at Avery Fisher Hall on Friday. Called “Battle Royale: Trumpets and Tenors 2,” it was the public face of what the writer Albert Murray has named “antagonistic cooperation,” where musicians, challenged by their peers, ape pushed into further excellence. 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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Lincoln Center Elevates Status Of Jazz
In 1987, when Lincoln Center’s director of visitor services, Alina Bloomgarden, started a small, three-concert jazz program to take advantage of the dark concert halls of August, she hadn’t a clue what would happen to her series. Keep reading »
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Joys of a Primer On Tempo and Tone
Today’s tax-slashing politicians, all too eager to cut school and other budgets, tend to think of the arts as frills, if not downright tools of subversion. Students in public schools, especially in urban areas, are getting less and less grounding in the arts, and often none at all. Keep reading »
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Kathleen Battle, Jazz Headliner
What was Kathleen Battle doing as the headliner in the first concert of the season for Jazz at Lincoln Center? She was singing spirituals and lullabies, mostly. In what qualified as a pops concert for the jazz series, she was drawing a crowd to Avery Fisher Hall on Tuesday night (and performing at Lincoln Center after a public falling-out with the Metropolitan Opera). Keep reading »
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New Tricks Introduced For a Cause
Benefit concerts can bring out unusual behavior in performers. Freed from the responsibility of being a sole headliner, they can try new things or team up for one-time-only collaborations, even if fans still yell for the hits. At the Paramount on Sunday night, Pete Townshend played piano in public for the first time; Paul Simon sang harmony with him on “The Kids Are All Right.” Wynton Marsalis, famed for his jazz purism, lent trumpet solos to “You Can Call Me Al”; in the same song, Annie Lennox delivered a verse in a thick Scottish accent, while Mr. Townshend suddenly turned into a hoofer. The concert raised $850,000 for the Children’s Health Fund, which provides medical care for poor children. Keep reading »