Wynton Marsalis's Blog, page 35

Wynton Marsalis symphony at Philadelphia Orchestra an aerobic workout that inspired fight and flight

“Everything about Wynton is epic.”

Such was the terse introduction by guest conductor Cristian Macelaru at the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Saturday outing with Wynton Marsalis’ Blues Symphony. More couldn’t credibly be said prior to the rambunctious, seven-movement, hour-long, high-traffic, multi-genre, multi-everything monster of a symphony that could well have devoured the Kimmel Center and the rest of Philadelphia along with it.

The piece even has a built-in encore: a final movement with a false ending, followed by a madcap coda that left this somewhat bewildered listener reasonably charmed.

Most of the audience stayed and cheered what had to be the most high-aerobic workout the orchestra had experienced since its last encounter with Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie. Others couldn’t get out of Verizon Hall fast enough. I waited to see what happened if Marsalis was there to take a bow. (In fact, he’s out on tour.)

For me, the experience was like Leonard Bernstein’s Mass: I’m glad it was written, I’m glad I heard it, and I’m seriously glad that Marsalis has moved on to more mature works such as his 2015 Violin Concerto, which just came out on a Decca recording by Nicola Benedetti and Macelaru with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The Blues Symphony, which premiered a decade ago in Atlanta, is out to prove that vernacular music can make the transition into the concert hall without losing its essential magnetism or bite. This piece — like a handful of others before it — proves it can work. But the very act of consciously employing shuffles, cakewalks, and even fife-and-drum battle music is the sort of curatorial effort that feels more like an assignment than an urgent creative act.

Marsalis did add some of his own touches. The fife music had a charming syncopation that wasn’t dreamed of in 1776. Many of the subtle irregularities in 1920s country blues were heard throughout the symphony’s multiple genres. There were also classical twists. At times, I wondered, “Isn’t this cakewalk going on a bit long?” Then I realized Marsalis was playfully subverting it and taking it to a breaking point, in the spirit of Ravel’s La Valse.

Much of the music crossed that fine line between programmatic (Richard Strauss’ narrative-heavy tone poems, for example) and illustrative (Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite) that can seem like a film score wanting to be its own film. The oceans being crossed in the second movement were conveyed with a dark, deep, ominous sound envelope that spoke of the inhumanity aboard slave ships. The music grew more personal as the symphony progressed, ending in the seventh movement’s argumentative counterpoint that captured New York’s urban velocity and the fighting tempers that come with it.

The orchestra rolled remarkably well with the piece — convincing blue notes and all. Macelaru must be credited with having a close association with Marsalis’ music over the last five years. He was also just appointed to the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Germany. Is Cologne ready for something like this?

Even in America, Marsalis occupies a singular position: More than Mark O’Connor, Edgar Meyer, and other composers who fuse folk and classical elements, Marsalis is steeped in both worlds with an authority that circumvents possibilities of creating kitsch. In his Violin Concerto, for example, piercing Stravinskian harmonies give way to the kind of melody that could only have been written by an American. But unlike Stravinsky, who placed strict limitations on himself as to where a piece could go, Marsalis lets his ideas run where they want, giving his music an impulsiveness that can be both unnerving and exhilarating.

It’s hard to imagine that something as powerful as the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1, heard in the concert’s first half with Leonidas Kavakos, would be left in the shade by the Marsalis symphony. But the concerto’s performance was partly at fault. The playing was extraordinarily clean. Quiet high notes that typically go awry even among the best of them were solid with Kavakos. Yet, in a Soviet-era piece that has layers of irony piled on top of an enigma, Kavakos maintained a neutral but less-than-entrancing interpretive stance, exceptions being his eloquent use of silence in the second movement soliloquy and, of course, Shostakovich’s rage-fueled use of folk dance.

From the podium, Maceleru maintained a similar tone. He probably wasn’t saving himself for the extreme musical risks that awaited him in the Marsalis, but you couldn’t blame him if he did.

by David Patrick Stearns

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

Ken Burns American Heritage Prize to be awarded to Wynton Marsalis

American Prairie Reserve is proud to announce that Wynton Marsalis has been named the recipient of the 2020 Ken Burns American Heritage Prize. The award will be presented May 6, 2020, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The evening’s festivities will include remarks by Ken Burns, Wynton Marsalis, Rosanne Cash, Board Chair George E. Matelich, and American Prairie Reserve CEO Alison Fox.

Named in honor of America’s most revered visual historian and filmmaker, the Ken Burns American Heritage Prize recognizes individuals whose achievements have advanced our collective understanding of America’s heritage and the indomitable American spirit of our people. Nominees for the annual Prize consist of visionary artists, authors, educators, filmmakers, historians, and scientists. The candidates are chosen by a National Jury of distinguished leaders who represent communities across the country and share a common appreciation of America’s heritage.

“It’s a privilege to lend my name to a prize honoring individuals whose accomplishments reinforce the nation’s understanding of all that is possible. And as one who has been irrevocably changed by the majesty of the American West, I am inspired by American Prairie Reserve’s historic mission to return a vast swath of Montana to the spectacular natural beauty first enjoyed by Native Americans and later by Lewis and Clark. The Prize we will present together to Wynton acknowledges the historic role that the Great Plains played in helping to shape America’s character. It’s that same character, courage, and fortitude that Wynton’s tremendous work elucidates. This indomitable American spirit is alive and well today, in Wynton and in the men and women in many arenas whose work reminds us that our lives serve a greater purpose.”

– Ken Burns

Wynton Marsalis is the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), which he helped found. Marsalis grew up in a musical household in New Orleans and studied classical trumpet at The Julliard School in New York City, and pursued his love of jazz by joining Art Blakey’s band. Aside from overseeing Jazz at Lincoln Center, Marsalis continues to perform, compose, and participate in educational workshops. Marsalis created the companion soundtrack recording to Ken Burns’s documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson and appeared in Burns’s Jazz and Country Music documentaries. In addition to his musical talent, Marsalis has written six books.

“The momentum of folly leads us to embrace an intellectual and spiritual corrosion that confuses commerce with cultivation, remuneration with regeneration, and money with meaning. I love the term “rewilding” because it is at once innovation and conservation. American Prairie Reserve’s rewilding of our nation’s landscape reintroduces us to our natural instincts. Ken Burns’s rewilding of our collective memory illuminates the hidden corners of our humanity. Jazz is a music that rewilds the soul with every listen. I am deeply appreciative to receive this prize from an institution I respect, bearing the name of a genius I admire and on behalf of a music that defines us at our best,” said Mr. Marsalis upon being notified of his selection as the 2020 Prize recipient.

American Prairie Reserve, which created the Prize, is a modern-day embodiment of America’s optimistic and boundless approach to accomplishing the unprecedented — in this case, by creating the largest nature reserve in the continental United States, located on the Great Plains of northeastern Montana.

Source: American Prairie Reserve

Exploring American history with musician and composer Wynton Marsalis

“Blues Symphony” takes you to church, the streets of New York City and beyond via the Philadelphia Orchestra this week.

See what happens when jazz and blues meet classical composition during the Philadelphia Orchestra’s limited run of Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winner Wynton Marsalis’s symphony. The seven movements paint scenes from important points throughout American history with evolving sounds and rhythm.

Marsalis and the Philadelphia Orchestra recently celebrated a significant collaborative milestone. The Orchestra’s recording of “Marsalis: Violin Concerto in D Major” is up for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, featuring violinist Nicola Benedetti and conductor Cristian Măcelaru. Măcelaru, who is also guest conducting for the “Blues Symphony” performances this week, became involved with the piece at the very beginning by assisting Marsalis with formatting the score.

The rapidly shifting rhythms and styles in “Blues Symphony” act as a form of storytelling, with sounds that might remind you of sitting in a pew or taking the subway. This work captures some of Marsalis’s own relationship with music and experimenting throughout the years. Wynton Marsalis sat down with Metro to talk about bridging styles as a composer and his close relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Q: First of all, congratulations on the Grammy nominations! How are you feeling?

A: There are so many things to be proud of with this recording. I really enjoyed working with the Philadelphia Orchestra, it’s so historic and a true American tradition. I don’t care if it wins awards because it was such a pleasure to work on, but it’s great to get the recognition for everyone’s hard work. That will always stay with me.

Q: Conductor Cristian Măcelaru described “Blues Symphony” as being very true to the American spirit. What does that mean to you?

A: Our traditions are built on the traditions of orchestral music. I used the best of melodies and elements of jazz, as well as the rhythms and styles that Americans got from African music. That’s what you hear in rock music and popular marches, the percussion has a syncopation that feels like marching. There are also effects like wah-wahs and all these other sounds to make it like the tradition of a hymn being cried out and someone cosigning it in their response. You can fit a little bit of everything in American music while honoring the history. We are probably reaching for it less now at a time when we need it the most.

Q: How do the different movements translate to particular scenes or times throughout history?

A: Everything is connected to different movements in American history and consciousness. The first movement is all about the Revolutionary War, so you’ll hear flutes and fiddles. There’s a constellation of different things going on, and all these different kinds of blues. In the second movement, it’s the Middle Passage, so then it goes between Anglo and African American orbits to show that part of our history.

Q: How does this incorporate your own history as a musician?

I try to be true to my own experiences, which was growing up playing all kinds of music with all kinds of different people. I played in a band with two different band directors that only played Souza marches, so there’s no need to pretend that Souza isn’t a part of my tradition, as well as playing in a marching band and a funk band. Overall, we are trying to understand the meaning of our music across time.

See the Philadelphia Orchestra perform “Blues Symphony” Dec. 12-14 at the Kimmel Center. Visit philorch.org to purchase tickets and find more information.

By Madeline Presland

Source: METRO

World Premiere Of Transformation With Glenn Close And Ted Nash Features Music Performed by The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

New York, NY (December 6, 2019) – From January 30–February 1, 2020 at 8 p.m. in Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center will present the world premiere one of its most unique concert events to date: the groundbreaking new work Transformation with Glenn Close and Ted Nash.

Transformation will feature the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis performing music composed by GRAMMY® Award-winner and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra saxophonist Ted Nash. Nash’s original work is inspired by literary works, curated by award-winning actor Glenn Close, that explore transformation in the tangible and intangible sense: from chaos to order, order to chaos, darkness to light, hatred to forgiveness, and everything in between.

For these special concerts, Close, downtown performance artist Justin Vivian Bond, Tony Award-winning actress and singer Adriane Lenox and more to be announced will read and/or sing texts by Ted Hughes, Conrad Aiken, Edward O. Wilson, Louise Glück, Charles Mingus/Joni Mitchell, Tony Kushner and Judith Clark. Actor/writer/director John Cameron Mitchell will perform one of his own works, while Nash’s son, Eli Nash, will read the letter he wrote coming out to his father as transgender. Members from the dance community will premiere choreography by tap dancer Jared Grimes. The show is directed by Danny Gorman, who most recently acted as the assistant director on the Broadway production of Sunset Boulevard and the West End productions of Man of La Mancha and Carousel. Additional guests to be announced. All artists are subject to change.

This collaboration marks Ted Nash and Glenn Close’s follow up to The Presidential Suite, the 2017 concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center concert and subsequent album which earned Nash a Grammy award in 2017.

A free pre-concert discussion about the music and artists will be held nightly at 7:00pm.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit jazz.org

Wynton Marsalis and gang bring spirit of Christmas to Lied Center

Next to the arrival of Santa’s sleigh, a holiday concert performance by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra may be the most anticipated event of the Christmas season.

Nothing inspires the Yuletide’s joyous mood like the “Big Band Holidays” program, and the 15-piece ensemble did not disappoint as it played to a near-sellout audience of 2,000 on Friday night at the Lied Center for Performing Arts.

Bandleader and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis had previously brought the band to the Lied Center for Performing Arts for the hall’s 20th anniversary and again for its 25th anniversary, but this was its first holiday appearance.

Guest vocalists have played an important role in the annual “Big Band Holidays” touring roadshow. Among the standouts that have taken the stage with the orchestra in recent years are Catherine Russell, Gregory Porter, Rene Marie and Cecile McLorin Salvant. This tour put Denzal Sinclaire, of Canada, and 18-year-old Alexis Morrast in the vocal spotlight.

The orchestra roared out of the gate with the uptempo opener, “Jingle Bells,” featuring Marsalis himself taking several solo choruses on trumpet before turning it over to trombonist Elliot Mason and tenor saxophonist Camille Thurman.

Sinclaire showed vocal style and wit in a rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.” He showcased his warm baritone voice on “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” He also paid tribute to Nat King Cole on a lovely version of “Caroling, Caroling,” highlighted by Ted Nash on an alto saxophone solo flight over the chord changes. Marsalis called it an “unapologetic swing.”

As always, emcee Marsalis provided plenty of background information on the tunes. He noted, for example, that the opener, “Jingle Bells,” was written in 1957, the same year as “We Three Kings…” The set list also featured two songs from 1944, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” with Kenny Rampton on lead trumpet, and “The Christmas Song,” with vocals by Morrast, who briefly dropped a lyric but quickly recovered.

She later excelled on Donny Hathaway’s soulful “This Christmas,” and “Is Zat You, Santa Claus?” made famous by Louis Armstrong’s 1953 recording

To close the show, Sinclaire and Morrast combined voices on an unusual arrangement of “Silent Night” done in the style of Fats Domino, circa 1954. It began with a rocking, New Orleans-style piano solo by Dan Nimmer and also featured growling solos by Victor Goines on tenor sax and Chris Crenshaw on trombone.

by Tom Ineck

Source: The Lincoln Journal Star

The Sound of Joy: The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis Brightens The Palladium with Big Band Holidays

The strain of melody, the symbolism of “Stille Nacht… Silent Night” took me back, years ago with my family, into the ascent upward and into the simple structure, a lone guitar and the small choir swelling into “Heilige Nacht” as we all sang from the pit of our stomach to the uplift of soul, surrounded by a canopy of silky star-draped sky.

Section-by-section, phrase-by-phrase the players on December 4, in the expanse of Carmel’s confection of space, inhabited the awe from St. Nicholas Parish, in the small town of Oberndorf near Salzburg, Austria. In 1818, the church organ was unplayable. Never mind. Franz Xaver Gruber brought to life Joseph Mohr’s newly minted lyrics of wonderment with the simplicity of his guitar accompaniment. Perhaps it was eschewing the pomposity from even a small organ; perhaps it was the circumstances of the preceding events in Europe, particularly the Napoleanic era; perhaps it was a miracle meant to happen then and again, even here on this night with fifteen players and two vocalists, sharing their awe to send us into the night and into the season …’ all is calm, all is bright…Glories stream from heaven afar, Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!”

“Silent Night” was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2011. Its story of transmittal from one humble Christmas Eve and Day is a tale of happenstance, traveling with troubadours who liked its tune and sentiment in any season. And so it came to us, in an arrangement of such swelling sentiment that the capacity audience momentarily sat in reverence before leaping to its feet. This is but the closing section of an evening of superb reiterations of beloved carols.

The Lincoln Center Jazz ensemble understands the power of music finding its dwelling place within us; they don’t find it necessary to come at us, smack in the face – loud, discordant. The gift of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis as a leader rises from a depth of soul, shared through example. It’s an ensemble. They share music rising us up.

And so we shared in communion a program of soulful, witty, big band versions of classics, including: “Jingle Bells,” “Joy to the World,” “Brazilian Sleigh Ride,” “We Three Kings,” “Who’s That Knockin’ at My Door,” “All I Want for Christmas…”

Along with a magnificent setting of “Go, tell it on the mountain” by the players, Marsalis added commentary about The Fisk Jubilee Singers (gaining their name from Leviticus 25—the year of jubilee) as a ten-member touring ensemble to raise funds for the 5-year-old, debt-ridden Fisk University, in 1871, but equally bringing to national cognizance the significance of Negro Spirituals.

There was no printed program with names of players and listing of songs and the comments Marsalis provided with each song. The promotional catalog did mention the two vocalists, baritone Denzal Sinclaire and Alexis Morrast.

by Rita Kohn

Source: NUVO.net

After A Symphony Of Swing, Wynton Marsalis Returns For A Powell Hall Christmas

Wynton Marsalis has championed traditional jazz for decades, working many of its styles into the big-band format.

In 1997, the acclaimed trumpeter, composer and bandleader became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, for his oratorio “Blood on the Fields.”

He’s also written three symphonies. His latest, “Swing Symphony,” was recorded at Powell Hall in 2016 and released in July. The performance was a collaboration between St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, then led by David Robertson, and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which Marsalis founded.

Marsalis and his ensemble return to Powell Hall Wednesday for a concert featuring Christmas music arranged for big band.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy D. Goodwin spoke with Marsalis about “Swing Symphony” and why the artist thinks big-band jazz is the perfect format for Christmas music. Here are some highlights from their conversation.

Listen to the full interview: Play

Jeremy D. Goodwin: When you sat down to write “Swing Symphony,” what were your musical objectives?

Wynton Marsalis: My philosophy is always: continuum. I don’t pit generations against each other, or groups of people. I always try to find how we are the same … I go through the history of songs, of rhythms, of different kinds of music — how they met, what they were trying to say. And I try to write them all in the language I speak.

Goodwin: What are some of the tricks to integrating a jazz big band and a European classical concert ensemble that you’ve had to figure out over the years?

Marsalis: That’s a good question. Everything is first form, and function … So that we all understand the form that we’re playing. Then the function. Where are the french horns going to sit? That’s very important. Who’s going to play a riff part? The violas, normally, in the orchestra, play that part. That’s the repeated part. How can you group the bass with the percussion? The bass drum and all on the larger beats so we can not get lost in the time.

For us, can we play in the volume with the orchestra? Then, how can we bring the rhythms together? Because we start playing the straight rhythms, ‘cause the ragtime and those march forms, those are not swung rhythms. So the first time we really start to swing in the “Swing Symphony” is the end of the third movement, when we all come together with a kind of part that’s based on Benny Goodman … we go to a thing where we just start swinging.

Goodwin: The history of big-band arrangements of Christmas music — there’s a really rich history there, isn’t there?

Marsalis: Yes, because it’s the one time in the year, now, that families are not segregated into markets to sell them products. Though Christmas is the most commercial time of year, it’s also the time of year where regardless of who you are, you are put into the position of having to hear music that is not targeted to your generation.

So it’s perfect for a big band. And these are all familiar songs, and there’s a tradition. And a big band is a traditional ensemble in the United States of America. Like the orchestra is, or like the concert band is.

Goodwin: Is there still life in all that Christmas music? Is there interesting stuff to do with it?

Marsalis: There’s life in anything you can make be alive.

Goodwin: OK.

Marsalis: Whether there’s life in it depends on you.

by Jeremy D. Goodwin

Source: St. Louis Public Radio

Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto: Beyond Category

DIGITAL REVIEW – It was Gunther Schuller who coined the term “Third Stream” in 1957 to denote a fusion of jazz and classical music. When he became head of the New England Conservatory, he even created a Third Stream department. But while everyone understood the general idea, finding a precise definition has proved elusive. For example, while most people would include improvisation as an essential ingredient of jazz, there are plenty of jazz-influenced classical pieces, e.g. Rhapsody in Blue, that have no improvisation at all. Are they really jazz? Is improvisation really an essential component of jazz? Lots of questions. Not many answers.

Wynton Marsalis is a musician who is the very incarnation of Third Stream. He was born in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, studied jazz with his father Ellis, a noted jazz pianist, and classical music at school. At 17, Wynton was the youngest musician admitted to the Tanglewood Music Center. He studied at Juilliard and planned on a career in classical music while still playing jazz trumpet with groups such as the Art Blakey big band. For many years, he alternated between recording the major trumpet concertos with leading orchestras while becoming one of the greatest jazz musicians of his time.

Still later, Marsalis turned to composition and, not surprisingly, wrote works that were clearly influenced by both jazz and classical music. As Marsalis has put it in liner notes of his latest recording, “finding and nurturing common musical ground between different arts and musical styles has been a lifetime fascination of mine.” But this is easier said than done.

In the case of his new Violin Concerto, as Marsalis sees it, the biggest challenges are “how to orchestrate the nuance and virtuosity in jazz and blues for an ensemble not versed in those styles (a technical issue); and how to create a consistent groove without a rhythm section (a musical/philosophical issue).”

The Marsalis Violin Concerto is a substantial and sophisticated piece lasting more than 40 minutes, or about the same length as the Beethoven or Brahms concerto. For the most part, the jazz elements are so thoroughly integrated into the very heart of the piece as to be almost unrecognizable as jazz. The violin is not a common jazz instrument – Joe Venuti and Stephane Grappelli are notable exceptions which prove the rule – and in the Marsalis concerto the violin tends to speak through its traditional classical persona. For Marsalis, that is not a limitation but an opportunity to expand the instrument’s possibilities to encompass jazz and to embrace its country cousins and the vast literature of fiddle music from around the world.

The Violin Concerto is in four movements: “Rhapsody,” “Rondo Burlesque,” “Blues,” and “Hootenanny.” In his notes, Marsalis uses metaphor to describe the music. The first movement, for example, “is a complex dream that becomes a nightmare, progresses into peacefulness and dissolves into ancestral memory.” That’s not much to go on for anyone trying to follow the thematic structure of the piece. But it is highly expressive and engrossing music. Toward the end we hear echoes of a march, “ancestral memory” – perhaps for Marsalis a childhood memory of a funeral procession in New Orleans?

The second movement draws on the wilder side of New Orleans, as Marsalis put it, “jazz, calliope, circus clown, African gumbo, Mardi Gras party.” The music here is raw and raucous and like nothing else ever heard in a violin concerto. The third movement is titled “Blues,” and it is exactly what jazz musicians always intended their music to be: the very incarnation of sadness beyond words. Lots of blue notes here. Is it jazz? Yes, but it is also music “beyond category,” as Duke Ellington liked to say.

Finally comes a barnyard throw-down titled “Hootenanny.” Fiddling from rural America transformed into art music of the highest and most joyous order.

Marsalis has given us a major work in his Violin Concerto woven from elements of American jazz and folk music. But it could never be mistaken for the work of Aaron Copland. Marsalis has a far deeper understanding of the roots of American music; he has lived it and played it in all its rawness and sophistication. This is a piece with so many layers of thought and feeling that only repeated hearings will reveal the full extent of its structure and meaning.

Violinist Nicola Benedetti worked closely with the composer to bring this piece to life, and she plays brilliantly. Her work, too, will have to be studied closely to appreciate the artistry she has brought to this remarkable composition.

The other piece on this CD, Marsalis’ Fiddle Dance Suite for Solo Violin, might be considered a companion piece to the Violin Concerto. It also was written for Benedetti, and it also draws heavily on traditional fiddle music from Ireland, Scotland, and America. Some of the source material is early jazz and some has more modern jazz added onto it, not to mention rhythmic complexity that turns some of these simple tunes inside out. The five movements have titles that denote their origins: “Sidestep Reel,” “As the Wind Goes,” “Jones’ Jig,” “Nicola’s Strathspey,” and “Bye-Bye Breakdown.”

This last movement draws on the same barn-dance fiddling that is the basis of the last movement of the Violin Concerto. Except that it goes the concerto one better in requiring the soloist to both fiddle and stomp at the same time. Johann Sebastian Bach may have set the standard for unaccompanied violin music, but Wynton Marsalis has shown that there is plenty of life left in the old forms.

By Paul E. Robinson

Source: Classical Voice North America

Sacred jazz: Reflections on a rare performance of Marsalis’ ‘Abyssinian Mass’

Since its beginnings, jazz has been draped in the image of sin.

Because the music emerged, in part, in the bordellos of New Orleans’ Storyville vice district at the turn of the previous century, the world has viewed jazz as embodying the illicit.

Never mind that European classical music, all-American marching bands and age-old church hymns also helped create a music that tells this country’s ethnically complex story. Most of this has been overshadowed by jazz’s association with the forbidden.

You can see it throughout our popular culture. When Mark Hamill wanders into a barely lit bar populated by strange and menacing aliens in “Star Wars,” what kind of music is the house band playing? Old-fashioned gutbucket jazz. When Jimmy Stewart imagines the decadent Pottersville in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” what sounds accompany his living nightmare? The wailings of raucous jazz musicians.

From the dissipated characters in Weill and Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera” to the hedonistic excesses of Rodgers and Hart’s “Pal Joey” to the soundtracks of uncounted film noir classics, jazz has been used to signal sensuality and transgression.

But the music has an equally vital – if much less celebrated – sacred side, which was robustly expressed at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater on Nov. 21. In a rare revival of Wynton Marsalis’ “The Abyssinian Mass” – commissioned by Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church in 2009 – listeners took a journey from doubt to belief, from sin to redemption, via jazz composition and improvisation.

One hastens to note that Marsalis is hardly the first jazz composer to explore spiritual concerns. Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” Mary Lou Williams’ “Mass,” Dave Brubeck’s “The Gates of Justice” and other major

works have shown jazz contemplating the divine.

Even Marsalis himself already pursued this path in one of his most compelling works, “In This House, on This Morning” (1994), in which his septet traced the contours of a gospel church service via mostly instrumental jazz performance.

“The Abyssinian Mass” builds expansively on that precedent, and others, in that a gospel choir – Chorale Le Chateau – drives the action forward through fervently sung text, accompanied by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. In effect, “The Abyssinian Mass” conveys the same message of hope and faith as “In This House, on This Morning,” but more explicitly (thanks to the words) and more ambitiously (due to its larger vocal-instrumental forces).

The evening-length piece, conducted by Damien Sneed, opened with a “Devotional” call and response between singers and instrumentalists, members of the gospel choir chanting “I didn’t hear nobody prayin’, I didn’t hear nobody sayin’, I didn’t hear nobody calling on the Lord.” Trumpeters Marcus Printup and Kenny Rampton answered these pleas with soaring phrases of their own in a “Call to Worship,” setting the stage for “The Lord’s Prayer.” To hear its indelible words sung a cappella by the choir, en masse, followed by some of Marsalis’ most virtuosic brass-section writing, was to perceive this work’s ambitious scope.

From this point forward, “The Abyssinian Mass” offered a headlong march to glory – musical, spiritual and otherwise. Prayer and meditation, scriptural quotation and colloquial recitation proclaimed the joys of faith in blues-swing syntax.

At a key turning point, Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III delivered an impassioned sermon, his words carrying a music and rhythmic sway of their own.

“We’re going to have church tonight!” Rev. Butts proclaimed at the podium, his very presence personifying the links between spirituality and jazz. For anyone who still questioned this bond, Rev. Butts told his de facto congregants in the Rose Theater that “The Abyssinian Mass” is “divine music. It’s spiritual music.” And that on this night, “This house is God’s house!”

But even as words sung and spoken dominated this work, the orchestra had its say, too, in three movements Marsalis wrote for the “Offertory.” Its most memorable moments included trumpeter Printup’s solemn phrases in “The Father,” trumpeter Marsalis’ stratospheric flights in “The Son,” and drummer Herlin Riley’s exhortations in “The Holy Ghost” (a less demonic piece of music than its counterpart from “In This House”).

In a direct tip of the hat to Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, Marsalis’ opus also featured a sequence for tap dancer Jared Grimes, his juxtaposition of hard accents and fleet footwork reflecting this score’s expressive range.

As “The Abyssinian Mass” approached its finale, you felt as if you’d been on an epic journey, its aspirations communicated via trombonist Chris Crenshaw’s sung chants, the choir’s incantations, and the soft and otherworldly whistling of all the musicians involved.

The work’s last moments – restrained rather than effusive, calm rather than climactic – suggested a kind of resolution or arrival. The final sounds we heard were of human voices alone intoning, “Amen, amen, amen.”

In the end, “The Abyssinian Mass” can be considered a counterpart to Marsalis’ “In This House” – a more extroverted, more accessible way of articulating an unyielding faith. But “Abyssinian” also stands as another significant reminder – like those of Ellington and others – that jazz and the church remain inseparable, even if many audiences don’t realize it.

There’s no conflict between lusty music-making and sacred aspirations, between blue-note dissonance and Handelian choral writing, between folkloric gospel singing and ultra-sophisticated jazz improvisation.

On the contrary, one enriches the other, as “The Abyssinian Mass” attests.

by Howard Reich

Source: Chicago Tribune

Wynton Marsalis’s Abyssinian Mass brings joy to the Lincoln Center, New York

It was odd to hear the apocalyptic terror of Verdi’s Requiem one night before the sunny exuberance of Wynton Marsalis’s Abyssinian Mass. While the Marsalis, shaped like a black church service, is bracingly diverse in its evocation of jazz and gospel styles, its underlying spirit is New Orleans joy — New Orleans being where the Marsalis clan comes from.

The score’s exotic name refers not to Ethiopia but to Harlem’s iconic Abyssinian Baptist Church, which commissioned this score in celebration of its centenary. The first performance was in 2008, followed by a revival and national tour in 2013, a recording released in 2016 and now this revival for three nights in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater.

The Mass’s obvious antecedents are Duke Ellington’s three Sacred Concerts, but Ellington shied away from actual mass settings in favour of more contemplative meditations. This score by the Juilliard-trained Marsalis is pure jazz, historicised but superbly accomplished.

Jazz composition leaves plenty of room for improvisation, and there is ample improvisation here, not least in Marsalis’s own trumpet virtuosity. But this mass is also imaginatively composed, with some wonderful instrumental combinations. The scoring is for the 15-member Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and a large chorus — not the church’s own choir but the terrific Chorale Le Chateau, named after its founder and decisive conductor Damien Sneed. The 75 singers sounded surely blended, but from their ranks emerged fabulous soloists, oddly uncredited and excessively amplified.

Marsalis has composed a number of extended dramatic works, though he seems to have trailed off in that regard of late. The Abyssinian Mass rather runs out of steam after the intermission, and some audience attrition reflected that. There was a sermon from the Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts from the church, eloquent but protracted. There was a long section with the orchestra alone, virtuosically done but formally conventional in its round of solos. A good tap dancer, also uncredited, ate up more time.

The whole thing could have been profitably slimmed down, skipping the intermission. Still, what Marsalis has achieved is joyfully impressive — miles and miles from the earnest despair and fearful consolation of Verdi’s mighty Requiem.

by John Rockwell

Source: Financial Times