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When Shorter and Marsalis brought the house down
This encounter between famed saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter and Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra was bound to be exciting – but also potentially problematic. Wayne Shorter shot to fame in the late Fifties and Sixties when he played with Miles Davis and Art Blakey, and penned some immortal standards. Since then, like some jazz Ulysses, he has roamed into distant seas with a trusty band of colleagues, creating vast visionary pieces that can play for an hour at a stretch. His eye is on the future. Keep reading »
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Nicola Benedetti and Wynton Marsalis, Barbican, review: ‘a labour of love’
It’s often said that the London Symphony Orchestra is our most American-sounding orchestra. And boy, didn’t it seem so last Friday. It was an evening of unabashed American pizzazz, led by the diminutive American conductor James Gaffigan, who at times looked like a Broadway show dancer doing a spot of moonlighting on the podium. Unorthodox his knee-bends and hip-sways may have been, but they certainly did the job. Keep reading »
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Nicola Benedetti: the violin virtuoso teams up with jazz titan Wynton Marsalis
It’s a gorgeous, breezy day in mid-August in the little lakeside community of Chautauqua in the north-western corner of New York state. Inside the modest concert hall there’s music emanating from the large orchestra on the platform, which is intriguingly hard to place. The trombones are giving vent to a throaty moan but they are surrounded by sophisticated harmonies, in strings and woodwinds, from a later era. And soaring above it all is the silvery sound of a solo violin, played by a young woman of glowing Italianate good looks, with a cascade of unruly hair spilling over bare shoulders. She looks ready for a day on the beach, except that she plays with a concentrated frown. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis’s Swing Symphony, Barbican, review
The LSO and virtuoso trumpeter Wynton Marslis’s Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra combined for a fitting climax to the latter’s Barbican residency, writes Ivan Hewett. Keep reading »
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BT River of Music: Wynton Marsalis interview for London 2012
Acclaimed trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his elite big-band jazz players will be a highlight on the Americas stage at BT River of Music, writes Adam Sweeting. Keep reading »
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Wynton’s interview on the Telegraph: It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got swing
Being with Wynton Marsalis is always an education. He’s happiest when he can enthuse about something, or learn something new from whoever he’s speaking to. Right now, sitting over lunch in a Japanese restaurant in New York, he’s off on the topic of jazz’s Anglo-Celtic roots.
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“Those folk songs and hymns the slaves learnt from their masters were the real basis, the African element was grafted on top, not the other way round,” he says very firmly, “and this is why African and jazz rhythms developed in a different way. Listen, if you clap a marching rhythm, one-two-three-four, you can fit a swing rhythm over the top, like this.” -
Swing Symphony World Premiere, JALC’s Barbican Residency Reviewed
During the dates June 9-13, 2010 Wynton and the JLCO premiered “Swing Symphony” (Symphony No. 3) with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Berliner Philharmoniker.
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Wynton Marsalis, Barbican, review
For many jazz lovers, big-band music is a sideshow in what is essentially a small-scale, chamber art. Wynton Marsalis doesn’t see it that way. Keep reading »
