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Marsalis mixes it up
Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra celebrate his native New Orleans next week with the premiere of Congo Square, an 80-minute composition co-written and performed with Ghanian drum master Yacub Addy and his nine-piece ensemble, Odadaa!
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Saving America’s Soul Kitchen
Now the levee breach has been fixed. The people have been evacuated. Army Corps of Engineers magicians will pump the city dry, and the slow (but quicker than we think) job of rebuilding will begin. Then there will be no 24-hour news coverage. The spin doctors’ narrative will create a wall of illusion thicker than the new levees. The job of turning our national disaster into sound-bite-size commercials with somber string music will be left to TV. The story will be sanitized as our nation’s politicians congratulate themselves on a job well done. Americans of all stripes will demonstrate saintly concern for one another. It’s what we do in a crisis.
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Wynton appearing tonight in a PBS homage to Louis Armstrong
Tonight’s PBS “American Masters” encore will show: “Satchmo: The Life of Louis Armstrong”.
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Wynton will appear in the program on PBS to explain the difference between technique and nuance - and why Armstrong was so amazing at both. -
Wynton appears in a new documentary-film to be out in February
The film, ‘‘A Trumpet at the Walls of Jericho: The Untold Story of Samuel Harrison,” chronicles the life of Harrison, a freed slave and a giant in the antislavery movement. It features a soundtrack by jazz pianist Eric Lewis of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and will be shown on PBS stations in February for Black History Month.
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A Trumpet at the Walls of Jericho, portions of which were filmed in Hudson and at Hale’s Farm, is narrated by Ossie Davis. -
Pulitzer changes put the emphasis on American music
In American journalism, the Pulitzer Prize towers over all other honors. In literature and drama, it conveys palpable prestige and often spikes sales.And in music . . . well, to put it kindly, the award has a checkered past. Keep reading »
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Marsalis Unbound
Following a limited number of concert performances, Wynton Marsalis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition “Blood on the Fields” has finally arrived on CD, allowing it the wider audience it deserves. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis is first jazz musician to win Pulitzer Prize
Wynton Marsalis says becoming the first jazz artist to win a Pulitzer Prize is not about him—it’s about the music. Marsalis won the prestigious prize for music for his epic jazz opera. Blood on the Fields, which focuses on the tragedy of slavery in America. Until now, the Pulitzer Prize for music has traditionally recognized classical compositions. Keep reading »
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Pulitzer Prizes Hit a New Note
Jazz got a Pulitzer for the first time yesterday when Wynton Marsalis got the prize for “Blood on the Fields,” an oratorio that follows the agonizing journey of two slaves, Jesse and Leona, from capture and the terror of the Middle Passage to their sale in a New Orleans marketplace and into the hardships of plantation life. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis has turned the hardships of slavery into sublime jazz
A three-hour oratorio about the history of slavery where the audience comes out whistling the tunes has to count as some kind of a triumph. Blood on the Fields by Wynton Marsalis - who wrote both the music and the libretto, and who performs the work at the Barbican on Tuesday with his Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra and the three featured vocalists of John Hendricks, Miles Griffith and Cassandra Wilson - is an extraordinary achievement by any standards. Keep reading »
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Marsalis’s ‘Blood’: The Spirit Moves It
It’s not the ambition of Wynton Marsalis’s “Blood on the Fields” that’s astounding, but the composer’s assurance in addressing the shameful institution of American slavery. Keep reading »