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Review/Jazz; The New Orleans in Wynton Marsalis
His first note of the evening was a plunger-muted growl, and throughout the concert’s two sets he used the smears and rasps of early jazz along with the pure-toned, agile melodic style he is known for. Mr. Marsalis, a scholar of jazz-trumpet styles, has clearly been reinvestigating the work of Bubber Miley, who growled bluesy solos for the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the 1920’s. Keep reading »
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Signs of Intelligent Life in Music Television
One evening this month as I was riffling through television by remote control, I happened to spot the stern, cherubic face of Wynton Marsalis. The young jazz trumpeter was the guest on a program called ‘‘New Visions,’’ a weekly two-hour series that airs on Sundays at 10 P.M. on the 24-hour cable music channel, VH-1. Keep reading »
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Pop Classics for Horn
Jazz musicians rarely get credit for keeping Tin Pan Alley standards current through the rock era. Yet they continue to honor that repertory, both by reclaiming pop melodies with eloquent phrasing and by evading them to reveal ingenious harmonic structures. Keep reading »
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What Jazz Is - and Isn’t
My generation finds itself wedged between two opposing traditions. One is the tradition we know in such wonderful detail from the enormous recorded legacy that tells anyone who will listen that jazz broke the rules of European conventions and created rules of its own that were so specific, so thorough and so demanding that a great art resulted. This art has had such universal appeal and application to the expression of modern life that it has changed the conventions of American music as well as those of the world at large. Keep reading »
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With Hampton and Marsalis, the 40’s and Today
Lionel Hampton and Wynton Marsalis, respectively the last active band leader from the big band era of the 1940’s and the currently most publicized young jazz musician, shared a JVC Jazz Festival Concert on Wednesday evening at Avery Fisher Hall. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis Plays Cornet Showpieces
Wynton Marsalis’s latest demonstration of classical virtuosity is a revival of showpieces written by, and for, the cornetists who led bands at the turn of the century. Keep reading »
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Marsalis with Philharmonic
THERE were not many furrowed brows at the New York Philharmonic last evening. The concert certainly put little strain on anyone’s powers of concentration or ratiocination, offering nothing heavier than Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, which turned up at the end as ballast to hold down what otherwise could have done duty as a pops program. Keep reading »
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Trumpet: Wynton Marsalis
The sensational young trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who has appeared most often hereabouts as a jazz player, walked away with the show at the Mostly Mozart Festival’s final program Friday in Fisher Hall Keep reading »
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Jazz Swings Back To Tradition
THE CROWD OUTSIDE SWEET Basil, on a Monday not long ago, is so large and so eager that even jaded Greenwich Village strollers stop to ask who’s playing inside the jazz club. David Murray and Wynton Marsalis, they are told; that’s why the place is packed. That made several Mondays in a row that the David Murray Big Band drew full houses, playing a stack of new compositions that cut exultantly across the history of jazz. Keep reading »
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Kathleen Battle Sings Bach
Kathleen Battle’s concert at Alice Tully Hall last night seemed almost a conscious rejection of the song recital format. There were no French or Italian songs, no lieder, no operatic extracts, but in their place, Bach, spirituals and jazz. Keep reading »