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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 »
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Bill Cosby Leads Benefit For Jazz at Lincoln Center
One thing Lincoln Center’s benefit for its jazz program at Avery Fisher Hall on Wednesday night proved was that Bill Cosby, the night’s M. C., wasn’t to be challenged. Keep reading »
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Marsalis Officiates As Classical Weds Jazz
Lincoln Center’s executives have for years been trying to arrange marriages, or at least trysts, between the center’s constituents, and on Sunday afternoon at Alice Tully Hall one of these unions bore fruit. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Jazz at Lincoln Center collaborated on a program that brought together jazz-inspired classics and improvisations in classic jazz styles. Keep reading »
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A Luxuriance of Twyla Tharp
Rather than pay tribute to dead choreographers and composers, import guest stars or rush patrons to a dinner where the flower arrangements are as important as the program, American Ballet Theater opted for a change of pace on the gala scene. Keep reading »
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Imitating Armstrong As a Form Of Praise
The two programs of Louis Armstrong’s music on Saturday and Monday nights, presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center as part of its series The Armstrong Continuum, clearly represented an enormous amount of work. Nearly 40 pieces were played, with Monday night’s program at Avery Fisher Hall digging deep into Armstrong’s rarely performed orchestral works and Saturday’s at Alice Tully Hall working through the revolutionary early works of Armstrong and King Oliver, among others. It is difficult music, and not just for Armstrong’s trumpet parts; the pre-swing rhythms are hard to make come alive, and the orchestral works, even the barest ones, were often complicated by show-biz virtuosity. Keep reading »
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Ellison Recalled as an Artist of Great Range
Hundreds of people who cared about the novelist Ralph Ellison traveled to Washington Heights yesterday to pay their respects to his life and art. They received in return glimpses, small and affectionate, of the man’s expansive soul. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis Takes a Long Look at Slavery
Wynton Marsalis’s skills have grown as fast as his ambition, and he is the most ambitious younger composer in jazz. On Friday night at Alice Tully Hall, he led the world premiere of his first work for big band, “Blood on the Fields,” a large composition—nearly three hours of music—about a vast topic, slavery. The piece was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center, of which Mr. Marsalis is the artistic director. Keep reading »
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Jazz at the White House (Home of a Serious Fan)
It had to happen, and when it did, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. After President Clinton gave his final remarks tonight at the White House jazz festival, the saxophonist Illinois Jacquet handed him a saxophone, and off the band went into Miles Davis’s blues waltz, “All Blues.” Happy to say, the President (who in his early career as a saxophonist had committed Mr. Jacquet’s landmark improvisation on “Flying Home” to memory), didn’t equivocate, change his mind or buckle to pressure, though he did look a bit uncomfortable. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis Raises a Joyful Noise
When Wynton Marsalis, the 30-year-old trumpeter and most celebrated jazz musician of his generation, hits the stage at Lincoln Center on Wednesday night, he’ll be playing in a style that, for the most part, can’t be heard on his recordings. Keep reading »