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Returning Duke’s Love for a City
The thick knot of politicians heaved like longshoremen as they pulled on a yellow rope dangling from a pulley yesterday afternoon at Fifth Avenue and 110th Street. The band played ‘‘Satin Doll.’’ Lost somewhere in the cluster of raised arms were Bobby Short, the cabaret singer, and Robert Graham, the sculptor, who had made the event possible. Keep reading »
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A Swinging Travelogue, With Ellington as Guide
How Chinese is Duke Ellington’s ‘‘Chinoiserie,’’ how African is his ‘‘Liberian Suite’‘? Do they become more so by a particularly forceful rendering of a little pentatonic melody, a particularly dense malleting of the tom-toms? Keep reading »
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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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Changing the Beat
New York’s Lincoln Center. For 34 years, home to the world of classical music. Now there’s a new sound in the house. (music) It’s a new sound for Lincoln Center but not a new sound–like Duke Ellington’s New Orleans Suite. 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 »