Wynton Marsalis's Blog, page 39

Homegrown Privileges Vanish in Exile

The Whitney Plantation Slavery Museum’s director of research reflects on the central themes in Wynton Marsalis’ 1997 "Blood on the Fields"

Commissioned by the Lincoln Center in New York City and released in 1997 by Columbia Records, Blood on the Fields is a three-and-a-half-hour jazz oratorio written by Wynton Marsalis. The piece considers the lives of Jesse and Leona, an African prince and a commoner, who are deported from their native land and enslaved on a cotton plantation in the American South. A love story and a tale of freedom, this 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning performance and slave narrative is meant to reflect the dark side of the historical South. In the 21-part suite (I through XXI) Marsalis performed with three singers and 15 other musicians. Resistance is the keyword in this work, a theme balanced by the implication that Africans were active partners in the Atlantic slave trade.

AFRICANS AND THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

Us sold us to this damned world

All you hear the echoes of dead voices

final screams

-III: You Don’t Hear No Drums

Many African warlords were deeply involved in the slaving business. This allowed the members of the continent’s ruling class to obtain European commodities, which distinguished them from the commoners. Above all, firearms were in high demand for their ability to provide security and as tools to build an empire. Higher quality iron was also desirous for domestic needs. Often used in negotiations, alcoholic beverages ultimately became an essential part of trade. In return, Africans offered cowhides, gum Arabic, bees’ wax and gold, but captives became the most important component. Their labor was much needed in the Americas. After their purchases, slave traders also bought food, wood and water to ensure the nourishment of the human cargo throughout the middle passage.

As a member of African royalty, it is possible Jesse contributed others to this trade before he was captured himself. The Wolof of Senegambia called these warriors Jaami Buur (royal slaves). Garmi designated the members of the aristocracy. Together, the Garmi and the Jaami Buur formed one powerful group called Ceddo, who are still remembered as brutal and merciless warriors as well as a fearless and proud people, much like the knights of Europe.

Many centuries before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, captives were exported across the Sahara Desert, but this early slave market could not meet the huge demand of the Americas. Since captives were typically obtained through wars, a reliable solution to the problem was to generate permanent warfare between nations. The European companies invested in these conflicts and backed those who most aided their interests. Locally, political successions were turned into devastating civil wars. The foreign companies supported the contenders whom they could later use as dedicated allies for the slave trade. French philosopher and political activist Marquis de Condorcet (1743-94) was quite aware of these intrigues, as he describes in the pamphlet Reflections on Negro Slavery (1781):

“It is the infamous commerce of the brigands of Europe that generates between the Africans almost continuous warfare which only motive is to make prisoners destined to the trade. Often the Europeans themselves foment those wars with their money or their intrigues, which make them guilty not only of the crime of enslaving people but also of all the murders committed in Africa in preparation of this crime.”

This voice of the past reminds us that African warlords counted on the support of external forces that the African peoples did not control. This is also quite reminiscent of Postcolonial Africa when people like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba or Burkina’s Thomas Sankara — leaders who dared to say no to exploitation and alienation — were either exiled or killed by coups d‘état orchestrated by foreign economic interests.

Abdul Rahman Barry — the son of Ibrahima Sori who was the Almami (leader) of the Fulbe Kingdom of Fuuta Jallon in West Africa — is perhaps the most famous among those Africans enslaved along the Mississippi River and mirrors Jesse’s plight. His story is described in Terry Alford’s Prince Among Slaves. Captured in 1788 during a war against the neighboring Mandingo kingdom of Kaabu and sold into slavery, he was taken to the Caribbean island of Dominica and then to New Orleans. There he was sold to Thomas Foster, a planter established in Natchez, Mississippi. Barry spent 40 years in bondage before he was eventually freed and able to return to Africa on one of the African Colonization Society’s boats. Before he was enslaved, Barry was a member of the African elite and was involved in the many wars that supported the Atlantic slave trade. He became the victim of the same business on which the power of the kingdom of Fuuta Jallon was built. His claims of royalty only brought him the laughter of his master who mockingly referred to him as Prince. Once again, Jesse’s fate in Blood on the Fields is similar. He is also a prince who finds himself in the hold of a vessel bound to America stripped of his station’s respect and dignity.

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

Death bound river of blood flow

Reeking foul, stench down below

All you hear, the shrieking howls of so

much misery

-III: You Don’t Hear No Drums

On the same boat with Jesse is Leona – a “low born woman,” as he calls her – which is full of bitter irony. Here is a prince forced to unite with commoners through this process of enslavement. It does not matter that they might be from his village or the same peaceful and defenseless farmers kidnapped by mercenaries who are armed by European companies and linked to local elites like Jesse.

On the boat, Leona is inconsolable and Jesse shouts, “Stop your whining common girl.” A Ceddo prince does not cry even when facing death, especially not in front of people of lower extraction like Leona. “I’m a prince, my heart is stone,” he adds as a boast. Men and women were separated in that ship’s hold, and physical contact between them isn’t possible unless they meet on the deck of the ship when they are fed or forced to dance to keep themselves in shape. Though Leona is already in love with him, Prince Jesse refuses to pay her any mind: “Common girl don’t ask me for no love.”

Nevertheless, he soon learns the lesson behind this Fulbe proverb: “Ladde andaa bii mojjo” or “Homegrown privileges vanish in exile.” Though not yet a slave, the overseers often ridicule him with loud laughter whenever he shares his princely claim on the floating jail that would take him to America.

Could not count the slaves I owned

All you hear, the mocking cry of past

accomplishments

-III: You Don’t Hear No Drums

ENSLAVEMENT AND RESISTANCE

Checking their teeth and hairlines

Pinching a buck whose skin shine

Looking for brown concubines

-IV: Soul for Sale

Once the African captives arrived in the Americas, they underwent a painful period of adjustment known as “seasoning,” which completed the process of enslavement. This period could last up to three years allowing them to acclimate to their new environs and the shock of the new world. Africans not only had to survive their brutal treatment and disease, but also the heartache of missing home.

Jesse’s enslavement begins with the supreme humiliation of being inspected like an animal and sold to the highest bidder. Besides this horrific experience, he likely experiences true terror for the first time since he took his first step into manhood after his initiation in Africa. At this stage, his experience might mirror that of Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave and noted abolitionist in England who was captured somewhere near the Bight of Benin. He noted the following in his 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano:

“We were not many days in the merchant’s custody before we were sold after their usual manner. The noise and clamor with which this is attended, and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers, serve not a little to increase the apprehensions of the terrified Africans. We thought by this we should be eaten by these ugly men, as they appeared to us. The white people got some old slaves from the land to pacify us. They told us we were not to be eaten, but to work, and were soon to go on land, where we should see many of our country people.”

The foreign slave trade into the Orleans Territory was forbidden after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, a law eventually extended to the rest of the United States in Jan. 1808. Though thousands were smuggled from Africa and the Caribbean through a newly created and illegal slave trade, the vast majority of slaves were traded domestically between the American Upper and Lower South regions. This internal slave trade became a very lucrative business between the 1820s and the 1860s. Its proponents spent their time buying enslaved people in the Upper South during the summer when Louisiana was exposed to the heat that nurtured a vector of maladies such as malaria, yellow fever and cholera. Some of those purchased in the upper region were transported on boats to New Orleans, but the vast majority were walked to the Lower South over a period of seven to eight weeks.

Jesse finds himself chained to one of the southbound coffles.

Necks wringed with iron in agony

We drag on feet cut bare by ground

For endless miles did not sit down

-V: Plantation Coffle March

Owners implemented a “system of divide and conquer” in which some enslaved people were promoted to positions of privilege. Perhaps best known are the domestics who served the masters in and around the Big House and were given better food and clothes than their counterparts. On the other side were the field hands who worked under overseers, called “commandeurs” on Louisiana plantations. The gruesome fact is that these foremen were also enslaved people, but they were given the power to handle punishments.

In Blood on the Fields, Jesse and Leona become hands on a cotton plantation and work from daybreak to dusk to a pace imposed by the whip. As they toil, they sing spirit-lifting songs.

Drive! Driver, hold that whip

[…] Blood on the fields

King cotton grow

Brown soil yields

White up above

Red down below

Take me home

Far, far away

-VI: Work Song (Blood On The Fields)

Though religion was used to justify the enslavement of Africans, it was also a vital tool to control the minds of the enslaved. “They, however, interpret the word of God quite differently“, it’s sung in “VIII: Oh We Have A Friend In Jesus.”

Born into slavery in Louisiana, Elizabeth Ross Hite’s testimony is a perfect illustration of the enslaved people’s agency as they created the Black Church on the premises of their masters:

“My master brought a colored man from France to teach us how to pray. But we had our own church in the brickyard way out in the field. Old man Mingo preached and there was Bible lessons. He gave sacraments in a cup.”

But this God is of no interest to Jesse, who is never able to get adjusted to his new life. In IX: Juba and a O’Brown Squaw, the chorus says, “Jesse thinks not of God, not of heaven, not of jus-tice, only his own freedom is on his mind. He goes to see Juba. A man so wise, the uninformed think he is a fool.”

The name Juba originates from Africa. Among the Fulbe of West Africa, Juba is a name both for humans, for a kind of bird and for a famous dance that probably gave birth to the juba patting of the American South. Juba warns Jesse about the many trials he faces before he can reach freedom, the most terrifying being the blood hounds: “Dogs got long and pointy teeth and would love some brown behind.“ Juba also advises Jesse to seek the alliance of the Indians “Be sad but sing a happy song to call the Indians out,” he says. “Any man be an Indian no matter how he’s born.“

Both Africans and Indians were enslaved on the plantations of Louisiana, and marriages were widespread between them. “Grif” was the racial designation used for their children. The Native Americans were precious allies for the enslaved Africans who ran away from their masters. But, as it says in “X: Follow The Drinking Gourd,” “Jesse don’t care about no Indians, no land, no soul, no singing, and no Leona. It was time for him to go ahead and run.“

Slavery was based on inflicting violence to the bodies of the enslaved. This violence was institutionalized through the so-called “black codes” with total obedience as its expected result. Marronage (running away) is its rejection and a central piece in the oratorio, but the price of failure was great. According to the first black code of Louisiana, those recaptured were to have their ears cut off, be branded with the fleur-de-lis, have their hamstrings cut or be sentenced to death if they persisted in their escape efforts.

Leona spends much of her time praying for the return of the man she loves, but she soon regrets this once her wish is fulfilled. Jesse is not successful in his escape and goes on to “feel the bitter lash of failure.“ He is neither branded nor hamstrung, his ears are not cropped, but he is “dog-bit and chain-burned” and has to suffer 40 lashes on his bare back. Thereafter Jesse eventually drops his complex of superiority and accepts Leona’s love. Though Jesse’s flesh is now tamed, his “soul” is not. He continues to pursue resistance by playing the blues:

When you see me dancing down the street

Singing

Know that I sing a song with soul to be

free

Which I soon will be.

-XVI: The Sun Is Gonna Shine

Blood on the Fields continues to be relevant today as there is a renewed interest in the history and memory of slavery. Apparently, Wynton Marsalis’ main source of inspiration is Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s Africans in Colonial Louisiana (1992), a seminal book that has redefined our understanding of Southern slavery complex. According to noted jazz journalist Ted Panken, Marsalis wanted Blood on the Fields to be “tragic the whole way through, with no redemption,” but philosopher Albert Murray ushered him in changing his perspective. He told him, “You’ve got to understand that if you make it all tragic, you’ll be coming from an expression that’s not really Afro-American.“

As Panken explains, somehow the philosopher helped the musician better understand “the transcendent value of the blues and of swinging.“ In other words, he caused him to comprehend the power of culture as a liberating force. Though the masters may have had control over the bodies of the enslaved Africans and their descendants, they never owned their souls. Jesse plays the blues to stay alive while connecting to his motherland until he escapes north to freedom with Leona. Today, The United States is similarly burdened. Though the country might seek to move past its checkered history, it can only seek to transcend because it is impossible to forget.

by Ibrahima Seck

Source: 64 Parishes

——

Dr. Ibrahima Seck is a member of the History Department of Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, Senegal. He currently holds the position of the director of research of the Whitney Plantation Museum of Slavery, located in St. John the Baptist Parish. He is the author of Bouki fait Gombo: A History of the Slave Community of Habitation Haydel (Whitney Plantation) Louisiana, 1750-1860, published by the University of New Orleans Press in 2014.

This article was made possible by the 2016 Pulitzer Prize Centennial Campfires Initiative, a program to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Prizes in 2016. Announced by the Pulitzer Prize Board, the Campfires Initiative aims to ignite broad engagement with the journalistic, literary, and artistic values the Prizes represent. The board partnered with the Federation of State Humanities Councils on the initiative and awarded more than $1.5 million to forty-six state humanities councils. The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities received $34,000 to support articles in Louisiana Cultural Vistas and public programs around the state about Pulitzer winners with ties to Louisiana. On Saturday, August 6, 2016, the “Let Them Talk” symposium at the 2016 Satchmo Summerfest in New Orleans hosts “Satchmo to Marsalis: How Louis Armstrong helped shape the musician Wynton Marsalis,” a panel discussion moderated by James Karst of The Times-Picayune. Visit fqfi.org/satchmo for more information.

Kenyon College 191st Commencement Speech

The following is the prepared text of the address delivered on the occasion of Kenyon’s 191st Commencement. He spoke to the Class of 2019 assembled on Samuel Mather Lawn. (Video of Marsalis’s speech will be posted soon.)

President Sean Decatur, the Board of Trustees, faculty, senior administrators, parents, grandparents, students, Murray Horwitz, Mark Rosenthal, Barry Schwartz and community members.

This morning we sit where generations have before us sat. We have completed courses, performed miracles, pulled all-nighters, made stupid mistakes, come back from abyss after abyss and we have finally scaled jagged mountains in glory. We are here at last — a year short of the new library, at least a year short of a winning football season, but we do have the first outdoor graduation in President Decatur’s six-year tenure. Hallelujah!

Faculty, administration, teachers, students and alumni alike decked out and dressed down in full regalia — just the sight itself says everything we need to know: This is a significant moment in all of our lives. It is an ending and a beginning distinguished by its certain uncertainty; a clear demarcation of an experience whose expiration date has come due, but whose promise begins as soon as tomorrow.

Graduates, look around and take in the intentions and best wishes of everyone who has traveled here to be with you in celebration of your achievements, which also burnish the reputation of this 194-year-old institution. Your dedicated people have come by every mode of transportation imaginable, and their presence is an expression of love, pride, respect and of protection. They are here to salute you, to join you in joy, and to ease your journey into the next phase of life. Handle the pressures of this day with grace and gratitude. It is an important ceremonial first step towards developing the type of grit and gravitas that life will demand from you in so many unforeseeable ways.

Today is a most important day. You have succeeded in aligning and convening the stars in your constellation with the stars in our constellation. The Kenyon universe is all aglow; from our oldest alumni to our youngest baby, the entire expanse of a human life is here in support of this class. They are all around you, enveloping you in feeling. Calibrate where you are in the time/space of generations who have worn the purple and white and embrace your position in this continuum of generations. With your diploma, you are also handed a responsibility to provide fresh meaning to this tradition that will divide your past and future into three two-word epochs: before college, in college and after college.

In these years you have been educated in critical thinking through the classics and philosophy. You have been provoked into curiosity and awe for the world around and inside of you through the musical precision of math and the molecular facts of the unseen. You have been given insights into the ways of folks and of their laws, customs and societal symbology. You have learned through foreign languages that our planet is diverse, complicated and lyrical, and that it slowly and deliberately reveals itself through the give and take of honest communication. You have been led even deeper into a relationship with the soul-expanding presence and timeless power of the fine arts.

Kenyon College has taught you to perceive the world from different perspectives, and to come to reasonable, intelligent and empathetic conclusions about what you see and feel.

When I was 9 years old, I worked in a gas station owned by a Mr. “Bossy” Clay. To give you a time perspective, at this time, gas was 35 cents a gallon. Whenever you gave Bossy some mouth in response to his instructions, he would shake his head and gruffly admonish,“Boy, I been your age, you ain’t been mine.” It was funny then, a phrase we repeated often in jest and ridicule. But as time has passed, Bossy’s perception has become clearer to me. As you age, time gets shorter and becomes more present. Your experiences are condensed, and things that used to pass unnoticed have your full attention. Any game with a clock exemplifies this. Not one player is nervously glancing at it in the first quarter, but check them in the fourth. That clock is all they see. And time runs out no matter where you happen to be in the game.

Be aware of where you are in time and space, and mind how you experience and digest events, because: Things happen. Little things you repeat every day that slowly make you into yourself with every repetition, like practicing an instrument, or playing your favorite videogame, or having your morning coffee; big things that you choose, like getting married; big things you have absolutely no choice in, like health issues or natural disasters; things that you think are glorious, but they aren’t — like what you liked, that everyone liked, when you are at any age that a lot of people like the same things together, and y’all feel that your sheer numbers will make it significant, but it won’t (like the latest fad); and then there are earth-shaking things that will never happen again, but you don’t know it until it’s too late, like the last time you saw a close friend who then passes away. Things happen, and it’s just not possible to pick and choose a menu of experiences you would like to have from the arc of your life journey. Some of the most profound things that will happen to you won’t be your choice.

You see, though we all envision our future and work towards it, the present is all we can actually experience. And it is often pressurized, chaotic and overwhelming. In response, popular pastimes distract us from a terrifying reality: the future is always now. So I ask you: Please be present today for your friends and loved ones, and allow the presentness of today to develop into a daily presentness throughout your adulthood.

Graduates, you will hear that an education in human ideas is impractical, foolish and a waste of time and money. But I will submit to you that your relationship to the ideas and ideals that you have developed here at Kenyon over these years is the very thing that will deepen in meaning and enrich your lives as you mature. That relationship saves you from an all-consuming bitterness over left- or right-wing politics you were never taught to evaluate; from an innocuous future of binge consumerism, or a cultish enslavement to online cookie-cutter predators that surround you with a curated world, tailored to your endlessly devolving tastes because everywhere you look you only see yourself.

Class of 2019, make no mistake about it. Live as if this is the fourth quarter. The world is a serious place, and your life is the most serious thing you have. Don’t spend it away in a pleasure-induced stupor at the cost of your personal power. This moment is not a rehearsal. Soon, you will receive your diploma, and that parchment is also a suit of armor. Should you choose to embody the ideas and ideals of this Kenyon College education, that armor will serve you well on this unruly, primed battlefield that passes for a globe spinning somewhere in the cold dark universe.

In the tranquility of this lush environment on this crisp morning, these words may seem far fetched, but the entire world awaits your presence in a conflict as old as dust that is forever being fought over the dignity, and meaning, of life on this planet. The victory of humanity hangs in the balance, and every sword is needed.

Because the future is always now, we need you now. We need your energy and enthusiasm, we need your optimism and skill and insight. We need your creativity and your humanity. We need you to solve the world’s drinking water crisis; you to clean up the oceans; you to create a lower-class economic infrastructure so everyone has a sense of value through participation; you to teach us how to value sharing as much as taking; you to show us how to fix our close-minded and close-eared democracy; you to free us from proudly accepting reduced personal freedoms; you to insist on leveling the plane of opportunity for the disenfranchised in your chosen sphere of influence; and most of all, we need you to do all of the things Alexa is not and will not be able to do. We need your participation in your own life, and we need you now, because your life is our lives. And it is the most serious thing we have.

I once gave a teacher of mine a composition. He looked at it for 15 seconds and handed it back with disdain. When asked what was wrong, he replied, “There is not a single rest or breath in it. All great music has some type of rest. You have to breathe.”

And so I say to you graduates in this proud moment at the end of a phrase: Though giddy with excitement, relief and release; full with celebration, feasting and imbibing of beverages, take this time also to reflect and to genuflect, to show gratitude no matter how difficult, to collect your experience; to enjoy what you have done; to cement friendships; and to begin a graceful transition from what-was to what-will-be by embracing this day with an open-eyed intensity. The genius composer and pianist Duke Ellington once said, “There is no art without intention. You have to play with intent to commit something.”

Your life is your art. Be intent on committing to living it in person. Start by trying to stay off your cellphone at the family dinner. It’s your graduation! Congratulations.

Six Questions With Wynton Marsalis

On Saturday, May 18, musician, composer and all-around jazz legend Wynton Marsalis will address the Class of 2019 at Kenyon’s 191st Commencement. Before his arrival in Gambier, we talked to Marsalis about his career, the importance of music education, and how a life full of music can have a positive impact for individuals and communities.

You performed at Kenyon in 1991. What do you remember from that visit, and how do you feel about returning to Gambier to deliver this year’s Commencement address?

I’m honored to come back, and I remember being there because a good friend of mine graduated from Kenyon, Murray Horwitz [’70]. I don’t remember what set we played or anything like that, but of course I remember being at Kenyon and I remember the atmosphere and the environment. And because I heard so much about Kenyon from Murray, I was looking out for it, and I immensely enjoyed it; everybody was so nice, and it was very down home.

So I look forward to coming back, and I think Murray is going to be here again, so I look forward to it. I also know Mark Rosenthal [’73] and Barry Schwartz [’70], all Kenyon graduates, so they’re good friends of mine, and we’ve been talking about it for a while.

You’ve traveled the globe and performed with the best musicians from all over the world. But you’ve also devoted a lot of time to music education. Why have you made that an important part of your career?

I think the two go hand in hand. If you’re serious about music as a craft and an art, you’ve practiced a lot, you’ve studied a lot when you were coming up. You’re always in some type of educational environment, whether it’s formal or informal. And it’s really such a part of your upbringing that it’s natural. And my father is still a music educator and he’s a piano player, so it really is a part of life for me. I’ve been blessed to go to a lot of different places and teach and participate in educating students, and developing students’ lives, and for me it’s the fun part of music.

What have you learned from your many conversations with young people through your music education work? Are there any lessons you’ve taken from them and applied to your own life?

There are many things I’ve learned from students, and one that always stands out to me was a lesson that I learned early. I was critiquing a student — I was in my 20s, then, and this was a teenage student — and everything I said was negative. It was always, “play this better, do this,” and then after a while the student said, “Mr. Marsalis, could you teach me from a positive frame of reference?” And I think that’s affected my teaching more than anything. There’s always things you have to improve, but there are also many things that you’re doing well that need to be acknowledged. So to be able to construct a map of improvement through things that are done well is often times a much better method of teaching than just constant critique.

At Kenyon, we often talk about forming communities, and music is a great way to bring people together. How does music shape and maintain community?

There is music that is community activity, or music that deals with fundamental human things. Like any time we have a ceremony, there’s music: people go to church, there’s music; if you go to a graduation, there will be music, “Pomp and Circumstance” or whatever, or the school song. Christmas and seasons have music. Then there are other forms of music, which are used to divide communities. That’s when they’re commercial projects. This is for young people, this is for older people. So music can be something a community can rally around; it can also be something that separates community.

Many student musicians stop playing after high school or college. How would you encourage a graduating senior to keep music as part of their life even if they don’t go on to a professional career in the field?

It’s important to find some type of ensemble to play in, just keep up with songs, just keep your instrument out and play songs that you like. It could just be songs on the radio, songs that you like to play. It’s always important just to keep the touch, every day touch it, it doesn’t have to be but five or ten minutes. Music is so important, but many times in our country it seems like it’s just an activity for people in the school setting. You’ll find that there are other people like you who also want to be in an ensemble. Any time you can, form an ensemble.

Many people think of you as a jazz trumpet player, but during your career you’ve performed classical repertoire and also composed a lot of your own music. Why did you choose to develop such a wide-ranging career?

Jazz is such a broad thing, it has unbelievable range. So I was always interested in learning how to play it, and it required that you learn a lot about the music historically, it’s difficult to learn how to play. I grew up loving classical music, and I had the opportunity to play with orchestras. It was always a form of music that I loved, even though my daddy is a jazz musician, so I grew up in that tradition. My father also loved a lot of music, and he always encouraged me to play different music, even popular music. He was always saying, “play as much music as you can, and develop an understanding of what something is on the bandstand.”

And I think that I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of musicians from different genres and play with them. And all the things that I’m interested in music that I like, I try to learn about and participate in the history of those forms. But it’s very much personal, just the things that I like and that I’ve had the opportunity. Some I could play, some I couldn’t. Some things I still have to work on; it’s hard to learn how to really play other forms of music well if it’s not your cultural music. It’s hard to learn how to really play well, almost impossible to learn how to play a flamenco or some of these forms. I mean, I tried, but … [laughs].

Source: Kenyon News

Jazz at Lincoln Center Announces winners of Essentially Ellington Competition 2019

Three Top-Placing Bands: First Place: Roosevelt High School, Seattle, WA Second Place: Dillard Center for the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL Third Place: Foxboro High School, Foxboro, MA

New York, NY – May 11, 2019 – Jazz at Lincoln Center today announced the three top-placing high school jazz bands in the nation in the prestigious 24th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The first-place winner is Roosevelt High School from Seattle, WA. The second-place winner is Dillard Center for the Arts from Fort Lauderdale, FL and third-place winner is Foxboro High School from Foxboro, MA.

Wynton Marsalis, Managing and Artistic Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center, says, “We’re fortunate to play Duke Ellington’s music, and we realize that the Duke Ellington legacy is about creativity – we heard and saw that in our young people. You lifted our spirits and it’s been our honor.”

Beginning on May 9, the 15 finalist high school jazz bands were immersed in three days of mentoring, jam sessions, and workshops. The competition culminated in tonight’s concert where each top-placing band performed with their choice Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra member as a soloist. The concert also featured the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis – whose members served as mentors for the finalist bands throughout the week – performing repertoire made famous by Duke Ellington.

In the spirit of creativity and continuing the jazz legacy, Jazz at Lincoln Center also recognized the winner of the 7th Annual J. Douglas White Essentially Ellington Student Composition and Arranging Contest, Miles Lennox of Dillard Center for the Arts (Fort Lauderdale, FL). Miles is an alumnus of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Summer Jazz Academy program and the Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival, where he won Outstanding Soloist for piano. Miles’ composition was recorded by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at their annual Essentially Ellington recording session on Wednesday, May 8. In addition, Miles received a $1,000 cash prize, a composition lesson with Ted Nash, and a trip to New York City for the weekend to observe the Festival.

Arts education has been a pillar of Jazz at Lincoln Center since it was founded over thirty years ago, with the Essentially Ellington Program serving as a programming cornerstone for 24 of those years.

The annual Competition & Festival marks the culmination of the annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Program, which includes non-competitive regional festivals throughout the U.S. and Australia, free transcriptions of the music of Duke Ellington, reference recordings, additional teaching resources, free adjudication, and more. The Essentially Ellington program has reached over 6,600 schools and independent bands in 55 countries.

Photos of the three finalist bands can be found here. Credit should be attributed to: Ayano Hisa/Jazz at Lincoln Center.

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER 24TH ANNUAL ESSENTIALLY ELLINGTON HIGH SCHOOL JAZZ BAND COMPETITION & FESTIVAL

1st PLACE: Roosevelt High School, Seattle, WA

2nd PLACE: Dillard Center for the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL

3rd PLACE: Foxboro High School, Foxboro, MA

SECTION AWARDS: OUTSTANDING RHYTHM SECTION: Newark Academy Dillard Center for the Arts Foxboro High School

OUTSTANDING SAXOPHONE SECTION: Foxboro High School

OUTSTANDING BRASS SECTION: Rio Americano High School Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble Roosevelt High School

OUTSTANDING TROMBONE SECTION: Sun Prairie High School Roosevelt High School Dillard Center for the Arts Foxboro High School William H. Hall High School Garfield High School

OUTSTANDING TRUMPET SECTION: Denver School of the Arts Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble| Foxboro High School Dillard Center for the Arts Roosevelt High School Beloit Memorial High School

HONORABLE MENTION PIANO: Luca Moretti - Newark Academy Aaron Korver - Roosevelt High School Sam Hanson - Tarpon Springs High School

OUTSTANDING PIANO: Mitchell Galligan - Denver School of the Arts Kallan Engleson - Sun Prairie High School Miles Lennox - Dillard Center for the Arts

HONORABLE MENTION BASS: Will Jammes - Garfield High School Aviel Delrosario - Dillard Center for the Arts Gavin Gray - William H. Hall High School

OUTSTANDING BASS: Vikram Bala - Newark Academy Will Hazelhurst - Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble John Murray - San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts

HONORABLE MENTION GUITAR: Megan Cody - Denver School of the Arts Jack Graves - Garfield High School

OUTSTANDING GUITAR: Brennen Ravenberg – William H. Hall High School Tyler Feldman - Garfield High School

HONORABLE MENTION DRUMS: Henry Mohr - Roosevelt High School Joel Anderson - Dillard Center for the Arts Corey Hall - Foxboro High School Liam Sweeney - Foxboro High School Meghan Lock - Tarpon Springs High School

HONORABLE MENTION VIBRAPHONE: Alec Streete - Denver School of the Arts Nate Mesler - Roosevelt High School Ben Dunham - Tarpon Springs High School

HONORABLE MENTION CLARINET: Allen Lin - Newark Academy Val Barrieau - William H. Hall High School

OUTSTANDING CLARINET: Toby Keys - Rio Americano High School Victor Lawton - Dillard Center for the Arts

HONORABLE MENTION ALTO SAXOPHONE: Connor Ettinger - Rio Americano High School Andrew Long - Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble Megan Rault - Sun Prairie High School Liam Vargas - Dillard Center for the Arts Chris Faison - Tarpon Springs High School Avinash Chung - Garfield High School

OUTSTANDING ALTO SAXOPHONE: Michael Wang - Newark Academy Tiger Diep - San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts

HONORABLE MENTION TENOR SAXOPHONE: Jackson Beymer - Mount Si High School Michael Hussey - Foxboro High School Alvin Paige - San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts

OUTSTANDING TENOR SAXOPHONE: Jonathan Downs - Middleton High School Roland Burnot - Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble George Fulton - Roosevelt High School Noah Yonteff Mathog - William H. Hall High School Noah Poepping - Beloit Memorial High School Aidan Siemann - Garfield High School

OUTSTANDING BARITONE SAXOPHONE: Andrew Stine - Middleton High School Nick Altemeier - Roosevelt High School

HONORABLE MENTION DOUBLER: Daniel Reichert - Tarpon Springs High School (Clarinet & Tenor Saxophone)

OUTSTANDING DOUBLER: Chris Ferrari - Denver School of the Arts (Clarinet & Tenor Saxophone) Eli Sullivan - Roosevelt High School (Soprano & Alto Saxophone)

OUTSTANDING TRIPLER: Connor Hoyt - Foxboro High School (Clarinet, Soprano & Alto Saxophone)

HONORABLE MENTION TROMBONE: Sam Keedy - Denver School of the Arts Jack Bendure - Denver School of the Arts James Kolke - Mount Si High School Tyler Stoll - Sun Prairie High School Geneva Raymond - Foxboro High School

OUTSTANDING TROMBONE: Elise Toney - Roosevelt High School Charles Blagrove - Dillard Center for the Arts Eli Heinen - William H. Hall High School August Braatz - Beloit Memorial High School

OUTSTANDING BASS TROMBONE: Gavin Baker - William H. Hall High School

HONORABLE MENTION TRUMPET: Emerson Borg - Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble Keon Gooding - Dillard Center for the Arts Naomi Patten - Beloit Memorial High School Sylvester Saliba - Tarpon Springs High School

OUTSTANDING TRUMPET: Grady Flamm - Rio Americano High School Will Knight - Roosevelt High School Carter Eng - Roosevelt High School Summer Camargo - Dillard Center for the Arts Adam Hobson - Beloit Memorial High School

HONORABLE MENTION VOCALS: Samantha Powell - Newark Academy Sage Eisenhour - Mount Si High School

OUTSTANDING VOCALS: Kaleen Barton - Tarpon Springs High School

ELLA FITZGERALD OUTSTANDING SOLOIST AWARD: John Murray – San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts

Each finalist band was chosen by a panel of judges comprised of distinguished jazz musicians and historians: Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis; Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra member and Jazz Ambassador at Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai Walter Blanding; music director and critically acclaimed pianist Aaron Diehl; big band leader, drummer and Grammy Award-nominated recording artist Jeff Hamilton; and band leader and Grammy Award-winning baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian.

At the awards ceremony, Wynton Marsalis presented awards to each of the 15 finalist high school jazz bands. Roosevelt High School accepted the first place trophy and an award of 5,000. Dillard Center for the Arts accepted the second place trophy and an award of 2,500. Foxboro High School accepted the third place trophy with an award of 1,000. The remaining twelve bands were each awarded cash prizes of 500. All monetary awards are to be used for improving the jazz education programs of each respective high school.

The 15 Finalists for Essentially Ellington 2019 : Beloit Memorial High School (Beloit, WI) Denver School of the Arts (Denver, CO) Dillard Center for the Arts (Fort Lauderdale, FL) Foxboro High School (Foxboro, MA) Garfield High School (Seattle, WA) Middleton High School (Middleton, WI) Mount Si High School (Snoqualmie, WA) Newark Academy (Livingston, NJ) Rio Americano High School (Sacramento, CA) Roosevelt High School (Seattle, WA) San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts (San Diego, CA) Sun Prairie High School (Sun Prairie, WI) Tarpon Springs High School (Tarpon Springs, FL) Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble (Raleigh, NC) William H. Hall High School (West Hartford, CT)

For more information, including background, history, and audio recordings of the Essentially Ellington repertoire, visit: jazz.org/ee

The Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival is media-accessible via Jazz at Lincoln Center social media on Facebook: facebook.com/EssentiallyEllington, Twitter: @EssEllington, Instagram: @jazzdotorg.

Wynton Marsalis Chooses His Top 50 Essential Jazz Recordings

Last week, Wynton Marsalis shared his "12 Essential Jazz Recordings" with Rolling Stone. As it turns out, there was a whole lot more where that came from. Check out his top 50 essential jazz recordings, culled from an eclectic array of categories:

First true intellectual of jazz possessing encyclopedic knowledge on and off the bandstand (to his eternal damnation): Jelly Roll Morton’s The Complete Library of Congress Recordings
Disarmingly honest and soulful melody: Charles Mingus’s“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” Marcus Roberts’s “Spiritual Awakening”
Manifestation of genius and an unparalleled set of unique achievements (playing, composing, arranging, mentoring): Mary Lou Williams. As a player: “Night Life”; As a composer/arranger: “Walkin’ & Swingin‘”; As a mentor: “In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee” (Dizzy Gillespie’s recording); Composing range: “Scorpio”
Profound insight into the true meaning and nature of jazz across time, space and cultural misconceptions: Django Reinhardt’s “Minor Swing”
A boogaloo church shuffle in a funky 7 – damn!: Eddie Harris’s“1974 Blues”
Super imaginative integration of European, African, American and Hispanic elements: Machito’s “Kenya,” Duke Ellington’s“Afro-Bossa”
Textbook genius Improvisation: Charlie Parker’s “Embraceable You,” Thelonious Monk’s “Sophisticated Lady,” John Coltrane’s“Crescent”
Destination: Soul: Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments,” Herbie Hancock’s “Tell Me a Bedtime Story,” Duke Ellington’s “Blues in Orbit,” Ben Webster and "Sweets" Edison’s “Better Go”
The Sweetest of Sweet / The Hottest of Hot: Paul Whiteman’s“Whispering,” Jean Goldkette’s “My Pretty Girl”
Supreme ambassador through effusive, ebullient, infectious playing: Errol Garner’s “Nightconcert”
Extremely sophisticated, yet lyrical melody/harmony combination: Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes,” Duke Ellington’s“Creole Blues,” Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” Thelonious Monk’s“Ask Me Now,” Bill Evans’s “Very Early,” Horace Silver’s “Peace,” Hermeto Pascoal’s “Farol que nos guía todo,” Chick Corea’s“Humpty Dumpty”
Audience clearly enjoying themselves: Cannonball Adderley Quintet’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”
Textbook study of thematic development in a long-form composition transforming a very basic four note motif into modal jazz, original counterpoint, and a beautiful ballad, while still swinging the whole time: Duke Ellington’s “The Tattooed Bride”
Otherworldly display of flat-footed improvisational skills: Stan Getz’s “I’m Late, I’m Late” from Focus, Louis Armstrong (second cornet) on “King Oliver’s Snake Rag”
Deep, deep groove of the Americas: Tito Rodriguez’s “Como mi ritmo no hay dos”
Sounds of protest and affirmation: Louis Armstrong’s “Black and Blue” (1929), Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” (1939), Duke Ellington’s “Jump for Joy” (1941), Charles Mingus’s “Original Faubus Fables” (1959), Max Roach’s “Driva Man” (1960), Max Roach’s “Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace” (1960), Dave Brubeck’s“The Real Ambassadors” (1961), John Coltrane’s “Alabama” (1963), Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” (1964), Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “Clickety Clack” (1973), Betty Carter’s “Bridges" (1992)
Making a horn sound exactly like someone singing: "Tricky Sam" Nanton on Duke Ellington’s “Chloe (Song of the Swamp)”
Insightful integration of the blues with disparate elements: Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk”
Uncommon psychological complexity while maintaining a lyrical intention: Ornette Coleman’s “Peace”
Floating over 4/4 swing in a long-meter subdivision of three: Billie Holiday’s "Getting Some Fun Out of Life”
Trumpets, trumpets, trumpets: Tommy Dorsey’s “Well, Git It!"
Classic bebop (despite poor recording quality): Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology" from One Night in Birdland
Harmonically challenging offspring of Thelonious Monk’s “Off Minor”: John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” Wayne Shorter’s “Fee-Fi -Fo-Fum”
Commitment to an original and sophisticated conception over time with absolute integrity and seriousness — Steve Colemanfrom On the Edge of Tomorrow (1986) to Live at the Village Vanguard Vol. 1 & 2 (2018) and any other subsequent volumes that demonstrate the same level of belief
All-time Baddest MF: Duke Ellington’s “Choo Choo" (1924), “Daybreak Express” (1933), “Happy Go Lucky Local” (1947), “Track 360” (1958), and “Loco Madi" (1972)
Stunning and invigorating talent: Cécile McLorin Salvant (her choice of songs, compositions and unrepentant seriousness)
Unprecedented improvised development with least amount of thematic material: John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”
Great deal of ambition in a fallow period: Marcus Roberts’s“Blues for the New Millennium”
Absolute improvement through improvisation of a classic American popular song (that didn’t need to be improved): Louis Armstrong’s “Stardust”
Profound uncompromisingly spiritual intention: John Coltrane’s “Dear Lord”
Merlin of the keyboard: Art Tatum’s “Tiger Rag,” “Tea for Two,” and “Too Marvelous for Words”
Most angelic singing: Doris Day (and Les Brown and His Band of Renown) on “Sentimental Journey”
Extremely mature jazz improvisation on an American popular song: Miles Davis’s “Stella By Starlight” (from My Funny Valentine)
Trombones trombones trombones: Duke Ellington’s "Bragging in Brass"
Relaxation in the face of chaos: John Coltrane’s “Interstellar Space”
Clear demonstration of how to sing the blues through a horn in all registers: Sidney Bechet’s “Blue Horizon”
Great consolidator of past and present with no concern for cliques: Charles Mingus’s Mingus Ah Um
Multifaceted genius of vocalese: Jon Hendricks’s “Freddie the Freeloader”
Creative use of form: Jelly Roll Morton’s “The Pearls,” Thelonious Monk’s “Brilliant Corners,” Louis Armstrong & His Hot Fives’s “Skid Dat-De-Dat,” Gerry Mulligan’s “K-4 Pacific”
Saxes saxes saxes: The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra’s"Tiptoe" from Consummation
Solo with an organic integration highlighting the relationship between a modern instrument and its ancient purpose: Louis Armstrong’s “Tight Like That”
Definitive master of playing the piano with both hands: Fats Waller’s “Viper’s Drag” and “Handful of Keys”
Mind-bogglingly nimble, flexible, intelligent and omnidirectional rhythm section: Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams with Miles Davis from E.S.P. to Filles de Kilimanjaro
Small ensembles that consolidated while innovating: Modern Jazz Quartet, Bill Evans Trio, Marcus Roberts Trio, Ahmad Jamal Trio, Gerry Mulligan-Chet Baker Quartet
Most meaningful concert: Benny Goodman’s The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, Jazz at the Philharmonic (various concerts)
Most meaningful composition: Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown, and Beige”
Significant long-form compositions: Woody Herman’s “Lady McGowan’s Dream,” Duke Ellington’s “A Tone Parallel to Harlem,” Igor Stravinsky’s “Ebony Concerto,” Leonard Bernstein’s “Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs," Chico O’Farrill’s “Afro Cuban Jazz Suite”
Great compositional diversity with no sacrifice of quality: Wayne Shorter with Art Blakey’s “Lester Left Town” (1960) and “This Is for Albert”(1963), Wayne Shorter with Miles Davis’s “Fall” (1967) and “Nefertiti” (1967), Wayne Shorter’s “El Gaucho” (1966), Wayne Shorter with Weather Report’s “Palladium” (1977), and Wayne Shorter’s “Atlantis” (1985)
Two people who did a lot of practicing (individually and together): Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie’s “Shaw ‘Nuff”
Definitive shout chorus: Eddie Durham’s arrangement for Bennie Moten’s Orchestra of “The Blue Room” (1934)

Wynton Marsalis Imagines Buddy Bolden

Nearly 120 years after his heyday in New Orleans, Charles “Buddy” Bolden, the cornet player and bandleader widely credited with inventing jazz at the dawn of the 20th century, may finally be about to get the attention he deserves.

Bolden, an independent feature film by director Dan Pritzker with original music composed and performed by Wynton Marsalis, opens nationwide in May. The movie chronicles Bolden’s high times amid the racism and casual violence of New Orleans circa 1900, and the musical achievements that led to rock star-like adulation and his crowning as “King Bolden.” It also details his sudden, tragic downfall: In 1907, at age 29, Bolden was committed to the state insane asylum in Jackson, La., where he would spend the last 24 years of his life.

The film stars British actor Gary Carr in the title role, known to American audiences for playing the charming American jazz singer Jack Ross in Downton Abbey. Also in the cast are Yaya DaCosta as Bolden’s wife Nora, Erik LaRay Harvey as Bolden’s manager, and Ian McShane as the villainous Judge Perry.

For the soundtrack, Marsalis plays cornet and trumpet, backed by an all-star band including current and former members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, in two distinct styles and aggregations: the six-piece Bolden band and the 10-piece jazz-age big band of Louis Armstrong, who was influenced by Bolden. The latter group performs “You Rascal You” and “Dinah,” among other songs, as Armstrong is uncannily impersonated on screen by actor/singer Reno Wilson.

“Bolden is really about the soul of our country,” Marsalis said by phone from his office in Manhattan. “It’s about the ‘black’ nature of being ‘white’ in America. We focus so much on division … we talk about whether a black person acts white … or whether a white person is imitating black. Now we have the whole ‘blackface’ scandal. This is something deeper in the soul of America. Whether you’re white or black, there’s a piece of Buddy Bolden in you.”

The relative paucity of historical facts about Bolden’s life, and the absence of any recordings of Bolden and his band, complicated the project. In the end, much of the film’s story and music amount to an educated guess. “The movie is mythology,” Marsalis acknowledged. “Some of it is true, some isn’t. It’s like many movies we’ve seen. Is The Godfather true? No. But yes. If it wasn’t true, it should have been true.”

Some of the incidents in the screenplay were suggested by the biography In Search of Buddy Bolden by Donald Marquis (Louisiana State University Press), Marsalis said. For example, the film depicts Bolden and his band recording a wax cylinder. Such a recording has never been found, but the Marquis book presents anecdotal evidence for a session, attributed to Bolden friend and valve trombonist Willie Cornish. Another scene shows Bolden attracting attention to his music in spectacular fashion by parachuting out of a hot-air balloon while playing the cornet. As unlikely as this may seem, the book mentions several unverified—and probably unverifiable—stories of just such an incident.

There is also some controversy over the extent to which other musicians in New Orleans contributed to the birth of jazz by mixing marching-band music with blues and church music. “Bolden might not have been the only one, but he was the best one,” Marsalis said. “Like John Philip Sousa was not the only one with a marching band, but he was the best. You don’t get the name ‘King’ Bolden if you can’t play.

“I believe he invented something profound; that’s why they called him the king. The inventors always know more than the people who followed them. Like Giotto painted with perspective. The people who followed him years later did work better than him, but they didn’t say, ‘He didn’t really discover that.’ In orchestration, Haydn was the master; he invented those things… I never could understand why [anyone] would think that Bolden is not the master of what he invented. If Louis Armstrong thought he was the king, he was the king.”

The music of the Bolden and Armstrong bands in the film—and on a soundtrack album to be released on JALC’s Blue Engine label a month before the film’s release—certainly sounds authentic. If Marsalis didn’t break a sweat imagining the Bolden sound, it’s because he’s been steeped in New Orleans traditional music his whole life. “For the movie,” he said, “I combined the styles of three trumpet players who were influenced by Bolden: King Oliver, who played with a great sense of dignity; Freddie Keppard, who played with power and almost a ragtime feel, and was good at effects; and Bunk Johnson, who had a smoky tone and played very crisp, short phrases. I feel like Bolden’s actual style was probably greater than all three of them. Just like the many trumpet players that were influenced by Louis Armstrong—each player took an aspect of Armstrong’s personality to develop, but Louis played much more comprehensively than any of the players he influenced.”

Bolden had several tunes that were beloved by his fans; the most famous was what became known as “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” later recorded by Jelly Roll Morton and dozens of other artists. Marsalis is sure he never played it the same way twice. “They were not reading music. They had tunes, then they played off them and improvised. He’s not ‘King Bolden’ because he played parts well. It’s because he was inventing stuff and coming up with new ideas all the time.”

The story that the movie tells of Bolden’s life and tragic trajectory is harrowing, yet most of the music is joyous. It makes for a strange dichotomy of feeling, Marsalis agreed. “This is a concept that is important to understand about the blues. When you’re having a hard time in your life … you don’t want music to drag you down. For you, a groove is an achievement of something transcendent. This thought that the only profound experience of life has to be death and transfiguration, or sorrow…” He trailed off, then added, “For you to grab joy out of that is a profound expression of your humanity. And that you can maintain your optimism without being naive about life—that is the joy of Buddy Bolden.”

by Allen Morrison

Source: JazzTimes

Portraits of America: A Jazz Story features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

New York, NY (May 2, 2019) – Jazz at Lincoln Center, in co-production with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, announces a unique concert event entitled Portraits of America: A Jazz Story at which the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will premiere a new suite, Of Thee I Sing. The suite will include new compositions written by members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and inspired by works in the Museum’s permanent collection. Bridging visual art and jazz composition, Portraits of America: A Jazz Story will take place in Rose Theater on June 7-8 at 8:00 p.m.

Members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra have spent the past year exploring centuries’ worth of American art, ranging from masterworks to lesser-known gems in the Museum’s collection. Each musician was asked to select a single work of art as inspiration for a new original composition to be premiered at Portraits of America: A Jazz Story. Each tune in this new collection of music will be accompanied by a visual display of the artwork that inspired it ─ including works by acclaimed artists Romare Bearden, Carroll Cloar, Thomas Cole, Gene Davis, Stuart Davis, Adolph Gottlieb, Grace Hartigan, Helen Lundeberg, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Nari Ward, George Wesley Bellows, and Frank Weston Benson ─ transforming Rose Theater into a one-of-a-kind art gallery.

Thanks to a close collaboration between Jazz at Lincoln Center’s creative and production teams and the Crystal Bridges’ digital team, each work of art will be presented in a way that highlights key details connecting it to the live music.

Portraits of America: A Jazz Story expands the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s Jazz and Art songbook for the first time in a decade. Past iterations include longstanding JLCO favorites like Ted Nash’s Portrait in Seven Shades and Sherman Irby’s Twilight Sounds, and the band’s composers are eager to revisit this rich source of inspiration. The music and visuals will both stand on their own merits, as our previous commissions have proved, but when combined, they are uniquely powerful.

For additional information, visit jazz.org.

Ticket Information Rose Theater ticket prices are $40 and up, dependent upon seating section.

All single tickets for The Appel Room and Rose Theater can be purchased through jazz.org 24 hours a day or through CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, ground floor. Note: Hot Seats — $10 seats for each Rose Theater performance (excluding Jazz for Young People_® concerts and other performances as specified) and select performances in The Appel Room (excluding _Jazz & Popular Song concerts) — are available for purchase by the general public on the Wednesday prior to each performance. Tickets are subject to availability; please call 212-258-9800 for available Hot Seats performance dates.

Many of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s concerts stream live in high-definition audio and video for free to a global audience. The concerts will also be available on Livestream’s mobile and TV-connected applications with real-time DVR, chat, photos and other materials available to fans worldwide at jazz.org/live.

Additional information may be found at jazz.org | Facebook: facebook.com/jazzatlincolncenter | Twitter: @jazzdotorg | Instagram: @jazzdotorg | YouTube: youtube.com/jalc | Livestream: jazz.org/live

Wynton Marsalis on Creating Score for ‘Bolden’ Biopic Without Jazz Pioneer’s Music

Jazzman Wynton Marsalis faced one of the most unusual challenges of his career when he agreed to score “Bolden,” the drama based on the life of early jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden: No recordings survive, so Marsalis had to create Bolden’s music from scratch.

That’s precisely what intrigued him, Marsalis tells Variety: “Just being from New Orleans, being a trumpet player,” was a start. But, he adds, “you can’t make yourself channel what he was channeling when he was playing. You just have to be as honest in your style about that feeling as you can be.”

The film, directed by Dan Pritzker and being released by Abramorama May 3, depicts Bolden (Gary Carr) as part genius, part tragic figure, someone whose brash and innovative style — combining blues, ragtime and gospel — was popular in New Orleans during the period of 1900-1907. The film frames Bolden’s story with a Louis Armstrong radio broadcast that Bolden manages to hear while in the insane asylum where he died in 1931.

Pritzker recruited Marsalis in 2005, and most of the music was recorded before shooting began in 2007. “The last notes Bolden played were over 100 years ago,” says the director, “and since that time we’ve heard Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix. Our ears are tuned much differently than they were in 1905. So the line Wynton had to dance along was to make something that resonated with the era but was appealing to modern ears.”

Marsalis says it was the director’s vision that determined how the music was constructed. “We’d sit at the piano together,” explains the nine-time Grammy winner. “I would ask Dan what he had in mind, he’d tell me and then I’d play it for him. That’s how the soundtrack evolved.”

Eighteen songs were written for Bolden’s group, says Marsalis, who chose his instrumentation carefully: “a seven-piece band that was configured like Bolden’s,” with the cornet playing lead melody and improvising; a trombone playing a countermelody; two clarinets; and a rhythm section consisting of guitar or banjo, bass and drums.

Ten more songs were recorded for the Armstrong band sequences, largely drawn from the early 1930s numbers made famous by the New Orleans trumpet king. Those feature a 10-piece orchestra “using the vocabulary and devices of that time,” Marsalis says: riffs, breaks, call and response, solos, shout choruses and a four-beat pulse that would come to be called “swing.”

The composer is soloist for both bands, playing Bolden’s cornet and Armstrong’s trumpet. “Bolden’s virtuosity was there in the way that he played,” Marsalis notes. “Someone in the book ‘In Search of Buddy Bolden’ said that every time Bolden played, his heart broke. It’s not easy to imitate that way of playing. I just tried to be as real as I could be about playing the music and playing it as intensely as he did.”

Adds director Pritzker: “If you listen to that last song Wynton wrote, ‘Timelessness,’ they duet together. You can hear the difference between the rough-sounding Bolden cornet and the beautiful big brass sound of Armstrong.”

by Jon Burlingame

Source: Variety

Wynton Marsalis Imagines Buddy Bolden’s Jazz On-Screen: ‘He Was Bringing Fire’

As much as jazz could possibly have an inventor, that person would be Charles “Buddy” Bolden. But although he is celebrated as a seminal figure in jazz at the turn of the 20th century, very little is actually known about the African-American cornetist and composer’s life. There are no existing recordings of Bolden, who spent more than 20 years in an asylum before his death in 1931.

Read the transcript

So, how do you write music for a musician you’ve never heard? You enlist Wynton Marsalis, one of jazz’s most decorated composers and performers. Marsalis’ proven track record made him the right man for the job of creating and playing the music for Bolden: Where The Music Began, the jazz biopic in theaters May 3 about the New Orleans cornet player.

Much of the plot of the film comes from urban legends surrounding Bolden. It was the task of Marsalis to create music that would live up to these stories. One scene early in the film is set at a picnic. Buddy and his manager soar high above a public park in a hot air balloon and, at his manager’s urging, Buddy jumps and plummets out of the balloon toward the picnickers. But as soon as his parachute opens, Bolden lifts his cornet to his lips and blows, drawing attention away from the ensemble playing on the bandstand.

“It didn’t happen in real life, but I’m sure it’s something that a manager would suggest,” Marsalis says. “However, the dynamics at a picnic are accurate. It was John Robichaux’s orchestra. He was a bandleader at that time and a rival of Buddy Bolden’s.”

Before Bolden dropped in, Robichaux’s orchestra had been playing American standards. “They played with a great deal of feeling. It’s just they did not improvise and Buddy Bolden represents the kind of wild, free spirit in which he did represent an entire new way of playing music,” Marsalis notes.

Bolden and his band overtake Robichaux’s orchestra, and put on an invigorating show, employing the call-and-response elements now well-known in jazz. Marsalis made sure to have the two competing songs in this scene speak to each other.

“I have respect for Robichaux’s way of playing,” he says. “I just think that the improvisation was too much. It was such a new thing and Buddy Bolden himself was such a magnetic personality and genius as a musician that when you heard his sound it was overwhelming. It was so danceable and infectious that Robichaux, his style couldn’t compete with Buddy’s style.”

It was Bolden’s improvisation and outrageous sense of showmanship that set Bolden apart from any other musician at the time. “Buddy Bolden was like Prometheus,” Marsalis says. “He was bringing fire! And he also synthesized the styles that existed at that time. He could play sweet on a waltz. He could play pretty melodies, but he could also holler and shout like a sister in church.”

In order to imagine this signature sound, Marsalis says he first had to make some assumptions about how good Bolden was — “He was called King Bolden” — and secondly, he had to make a composite sound based on three horn players who were influenced by Bolden and were recorded in their own lifetimes. Those three successors were Freddie Keppard, who played in a ragtime style, Bunk Johnson, who played with a smokey sound and a very straight lead, and King Oliver, who Marsalis says played with dignity “but also create a lot of vocal sounds.”

“I put those three styles together and I figured, ‘OK, these three musicians were all influenced by Buddy Bolden, so they took an aspect of Bolden’s personality to construct their playing. So, Bolden could play better than all three of them,’” Marsalis says.

When it came to playing like Bolden, Marsalis says he would try to embody how he imagined Bolden played: Energetic, authoritative and definitive. Marsalis would often hold a note to the end of his breath and play strong leads. “I tried to just take the kind of extremes I feel that he probably played with.”

In the film, Bolden enjoyed a meteoric rise and at one point, was performing every night. Marsalis notes that fans often said Bolden played as if his heart was breaking. “He was the type of musician whose sound had the depth of human feeling that touched listeners and they didn’t forget that sound. That sound put a healing on them,” Marsalis says.

Bolden arrives in theaters on Friday. Marsalis spoke with NPR’s Audie Cornish about the obstacles Bolden had to overcome in jazz and in life and why his legacy is not more widely known. Hear their conversation at the audio link.

Source: NPR

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Interview Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

How do you write music for a musician whose work you’ve never heard, whose work no one has ever heard because there are no recordings? On the case of Buddy Bolden, a founding father of jazz, it helps that one of the greatest performers in modern times grew up in his hometown, studied his work…

WYNTON MARSALIS: Well, I mean, that’s my tradition. It’s my instrument. It’s what I love.

CORNISH: …And of course can carry a tune.

MARSALIS: Little things like (vocalizing).

CORNISH: Wynton Marsalis, one of the most decorated composers and performers in jazz, took up this task for the movie “Bolden.” Bolden a cornetist, was born shortly after the Civil War and lived a troubled life in and out of New Orleans dance clubs. By his early 30s, he was in a mental asylum, so much of the movie imagines his career. An early scene shows a picnic in a public park with a tuxedoed band playing the classic music of the time. Bolden is depicted as literally parachuting into the scene from a hot air balloon, playing as he falls.

MARSALIS: It didn’t happen in real life.

CORNISH: (Laughter) OK.

MARSALIS: But I’m sure it’s something that a manager would suggest…

CORNISH: (Laughter).

MARSALIS: …Something of that level of absurdity. However, the dynamics of the picnic are accurate. It was John Robichaux’s orchestra.

CORNISH: So he was a bandleader at that time.

MARSALIS: He was a bandleader at that time and a rival of Buddy Bolden’s.

CORNISH: And they are very formal, right? What are the elements of the music that we hear from the orchestra in that scene to start before Bolden comes?

MARSALIS: They’re playing straight American popular songs.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

MARSALIS: But it’s not like they play stiff or that they were musicians who didn’t have incredible musicianship. They played with a great deal of feeling. It’s just they did not improvise. And Buddy Bolden represents the kind of wild, free spirit in which he did represent an entire new way of playing music. But the tendency is to denigrate Robichaux’s musicians and to make them seem as if they half-played the music that they played.

CORNISH: Interesting ‘cause when Bolden enters the scene…

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

CORNISH: …And his band pulls up and it’s this freewheeling performance, you have the call-and-response elements people are familiar with now.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) Hey, Buddy Bolden.

CORNISH: But I notice you have these two songs speaking to each other in a way.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

MARSALIS: Yeah, because I have respect for Robichaux’s way of playing also. I just think the improvisation was too much. It was such a new thing, and Buddy Bolden himself was such a magnetic personality and genius as a musician that when you heard his sound, it was overwhelming. It was so dense and infectious that Robichaux just – his style couldn’t compete with Buddy’s style.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

CORNISH: I want to talk about this idea of what made his improvisation so groundbreaking in that moment and why people kind of look to him as the person who was the kind of father of jazz. How striking was that improvisation?

MARSALIS: Buddy Bolden was like Prometheus. He was bringing fire, and he also synthesized the styles that existed at the time. So he could play sweet on a waltz. He could play pretty melodies. But he could also holler and shout like a sister in church. And he was so provocative as a musician. And his hearing was so clear. And as one lady at his time said, every time Bolden played, his heart broke so that he was the type of musician whose sound had the depth of human feeling that touched listeners, and they didn’t forget that sound. That sound put a healing on them.

CORNISH: Is there a song you think that really showcases that spirit where you try to really show the audience that kind of playing?

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

MARSALIS: “Come On Children,” the first song, like, in the way that I’m playing, the fanfares and the type of lead trumpet that I’m playing. I’m trying to be very authoritative and definitive.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

MARSALIS: He played very loud.

CORNISH: Yeah.

MARSALIS: He played with a lot of energy.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

MARSALIS: And I’m trying to play fanfares, which is the basic thing trumpet players do.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

MARSALIS: I also hold one note to the end of my breath. I try to just – just the kind of extremes I feel that he probably played with. Then I try to play a good lead. (Vocalizing).

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BOLDEN”)

MARSALIS: It’s a little kind of blues riff ditty like what they would play at that time.

CORNISH: I have to say. How do you do that when you haven’t actually heard the person? Like, your descriptions of his music are so vivid, but we actually don’t know what he sounded like.

MARSALIS: First I make certain assumptions. Like, first I assume that he really could play.

CORNISH: (Laughter).

MARSALIS: He was called King Bolden.

CORNISH: Yeah.

MARSALIS: He wouldn’t have been called King. The second is I composite the three great cornet players who we have recordings of that were influenced by him. One is Freddie Keppard, great Creole cornetist who played in more of a ragtime style…

(SOUNDBITE OF FREDDIE KEPPARD’S JAZZ CARDINALS “STOCK YARDS STRUT”)

MARSALIS: …Bunk Johnson, who was a much younger man but was influenced by Buddy Bolden and played with a very smoky sound and played a very straight lead.

(SOUNDBITE OF BUNK JOHNSON’S “LOW DOWN BLUES”)

MARSALIS: And the third trumpet player is King Oliver.

(SOUNDBITE OF KING OLIVER’S “SPEAKEASY BLUES”)

MARSALIS: From King Oliver, you get the kind of dignity ‘cause King Oliver played with a lot of dignity but also created a lot of vocal sounds.

(SOUNDBITE OF KING OLIVER’S “SPEAKEASY BLUES”)

MARSALIS: So I put those three styles together, and I figured, OK, these three musicians were all influenced by Buddy Bolden, so they took an aspect of Bolden’s personality to construct their playing. So Bolden could play better than all three of them.

(SOUNDBITE OF KING OLIVER’S “SPEAKEASY BLUES”)

CORNISH: The film also depicts all of the struggles that African Americans are going through in that period of time, especially for someone like Bolden, who apparently suffered from mental illness, right? He died in a mental institution…

MARSALIS: Yeah.

CORNISH: …In 1931.

MARSALIS: Yes, he did suffer from mental illness.

CORNISH: And he inspired so many jazz greats. Why do you think in a way his history was lost to the mainstream?

MARSALIS: The musicians knew about him, but there have – has always been an attempt to denigrate the greatest Afro American figures in terms of their – what their actual achievement is. And then there’s a lack of interest in the Afro American community itself for what – for their achievements. So the church’s stance on jazz was always it’s the devil’s music; we don’t want to hear it. Black universities and institutions, when they began to crop up, didn’t want to deal with jazz at all. They strictly dealt with classical music. Even in my father’s time, he said he would get thrown out of practice rooms at Dillard and at Southern University for trying to play jazz. So a figure like Bolden would be overlooked.

(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS’ “TIMELESSNESS”)

CORNISH: You’re such a decorated performer and artist. I know you were the only artist to win, for instance, like, a jazz and classical music Grammy in the same year. What do you think Buddy Bolden would have thought of where this music is now?

MARSALIS: I think, you know, for him to hear, like, Louis Armstrong’s playing or Miles’ playing or Dizzy Gillespie’s playing or – just so many great musicians. I can name them of all races. I happen to just name Afro American musicians, but if you take him listening to Paul Desmond or Dave Brubeck’s group or even fantastic high school students, I think he would be proud of it because the older musicians I knew – the older they were, the more they were proud of what had happened with the music.

CORNISH: Well, Wynton Marsalis, thank you so much for sharing this music with us. Thank you for speaking with us.

MARSALIS: Thank you so much, Audie. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS’ “BUDDY’S HORN”)

CORNISH: Wynton Marsalis wrote and performed the music for the film “Bolden.” The movie is out Friday.

(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS’ “BUDDY’S HORN”)

Director Dan Pritzker Talks About The Long-Awaited Musical Film ‘Bolden’

Coming out this week from Abramorama is the biopic Bolden, who created improvisation in New Orleans in the early 1900’s and pioneered the musical art form we now call JAZZ!!!

Directed by Dan Pritzker from a script written by Pritzker and David N. Rothschild, the film stars Gary Carr, Erik LaRay Harvey, Yaya DaCosta, Reno Wilson, Karimah Westbrook, JoNell Kennedy, Robert Ri’chard, Serena Reeder with Michael Rooker and Ian McShane.

The music was written, arranged & performed by multiple Grammy winner Wynton Marsalis.

The film is set in 1931 New Orleans, when Buddy Bolden, a long-time asylum inmate, hears the strains of a Louis Armstrong concert drift into his room from the radio in a nearby nurse’s station. The sound evokes memories of his long-forgotten youth as a ground-breaking cornetist, when he played and improvised his way to the forefront of a new musical style, ultimately creating what would evolve decades later into jazz.

Blackfilm.com correspondent Nicole Granston spoke with Pritzker about the making of this film.

Nicole Granston: Jazz is a well-known art form, but Charles “Buddy” Bolden, one of the founding pioneers isn’t. He’s sort of a myth. Talk about the dynamically immersive style and the film technique? What were you going for? What inspired you?

Dan Pritzker: When I first heard about Buddy Bolden, I was a musician. I still am. I was aware from the time I was a kid, of the through line from Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Hendrix, Jay Z, whomever you want to name. I don’t know the music you grew up on, but I would bet you that if we were listening to different stuff, it all came from the same place.

It struck me as poetic and tragic that there was this guy that flipped on the lights for all of us, and it was very moving to me that he changed the way we walked, the way we talked, the way we looked at time. I wanted to make an allegory about the soul of America, rather than a biography about the man because there’s not enough information about the guy to actually do a biography.

NG: You first heard the name Buddy Bolden, while you were touring with Sonia Dada, some 20 years ago. Since then you’ve made producing this film a passion project of yours. What captivated you about this story, this person?

DP: When this guy said, “Oh Buddy Bolden he invented Jazz, check him out”, it hit me immediately that this is American mythology. This is the tragedy and poetry of the country, that we would discard to anonymity the black guy that changed everything. Isn’t that typical American? It hit me at a very deep emotional level. As corny as it may sound, as soon as that guy said this to me, I didn’t think, “oh I’m going to make a movie”. I’d never made a movie before. I had no interest in making it. I’m not a cinephile. I like movies as much as the next person. I’m fanatic about music and have been since I was a little kid. Being able to close your eyes and just go inside of yourself listening to music, it was my spiritual center through my childhood and still is. Hearing about Buddy, made me say, I’d like to try and take a whack at telling the story my way. It allowed something open ended for me to use my own imagination. I would not have done a biopic or a story about Louis Armstrong because every minute of that guy’s life is so well documented, that you’re really just picking off anecdotes and stories. Bolden’s life was a much more opened ended story that allowed me to make something that sort of transcended the life of the man.

NG: Did you ever have any trepidation being a white person telling this story?

DP: Everyday, all day and even right now. (LOL) I say that but at the same time, not really because it’s just me. All the music that I love came from Black Americans. It has very much impacted my life that I don’t view it that way. I like what I like and it’s music. I have my own experience. I live my life.

NG: That explains a lot when looking at the movie. You as a musician, that’s how you see things. The rhythm, the sowing machines, the light; everything is playing off of each other. I assume those were all important elements in how you told the story?

DP: Also, to me, what was very important was that he was elevating women. He was seeing these working women in a more mythical, goddess type of way. They were giving him inspiration and he was giving back to them. It was a symbiotic relationship between them. That was an important element to me.

NG: Talk to us about the scene where Buddy is a little boy, hanging out at the factory where his mother worked and he’s laying on the floor. He’s listening to the humming and drumming, and the tic toc sounds of the machines. Is it safe to say you were trying to portray the fact that he learned rhythms and beats from those sounds and that music became part of his soul at that age?

DP: Whether it’s a piece of music, a painting or a film, when it’s successful, it resonates something in you, the viewer or listener. What I meant by a scene, honestly in my opinion is less relevant than how you received it because it’s no less valid or real.

NG: I’ve heard you’ve gone through many different versions to the point that you had to reshoot. What were you looking for that you finally found in this version?

DP: When I shot it the first time, I had never made a film before and it was a steep learning curve for me. I got home after shooting and I knew I didn’t have it, but I also knew I wasn’t done. I just had to go at it a different way, but I learned a lot and met all kinds of people, cast and crew. You start to get a feel for who gets your vision and who does not. I had to lick my wounds. It was hard for me to watch it after shooting the first version. I really wasn’t happy with how it turned out. I was dogged and went back out.

To your earlier question about being a white guy writing on this topic, I did not write the script in black vernacular. I knew I was going to be relying on the actors to bring that authenticity to the screen. We would talk about it. It was something very important to me. I wrote songs and other people sang my songs. The marriage between the voice and the song in your mouth, might work great, but in my mouth might not. So it was very important for the actors to bring everything to the table. By the time I got to the second shoot, I had people around me that were on the same page with me.

NG: What blew you away with Gary Carr?

DP: He’s just a different kind of guy. He’s a British guy that grew up in the theater world. He has enormous discipline but he doesn’t come from this sort of, macho American thing. He wasn’t out there being ‘jazz man’ he was more bookish, more introverted. I just thought it was a more interesting nuance to bring to the part.

I can tell you Gary is not the character he plays. In other words, he was in another place completely. A lot of times you work with actors who play characters who are extensions of them. He was really in a mode. When we came back for a week of reshoots in 2016 I could tell it was a little difficult for him. By that time he had been on a show on HBO and had done other stuff. It’s hard to turn that on and off, when you’ve had time away, but he’s brilliant. He’s a great guy.

Gary is a great dancer. He did professional dancing in West End and other shows. He’s an athlete in the way a dancer is an athlete. He had terrific hand-eye coordination. Being able to learn how to convincingly play the Coronet is difficult. It’s a hard instrument. It’s not a long instrument, it’s right up on your face. It’s a very physical thing. He had to learn how to look real doing it.

by Nicole Granston

Source: Blackfilm