Wynton Marsalis's Blog, page 46

An Interview with Wynton Marsalis

UCSB Arts & Lectures Presents the Legendary Musician and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

Everything old is new again. From the 1920s through the 1940s, the art of jazz revolved around the music of the great big bands. Led by men like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Earl Hines, Fletcher Henderson, and Benny Goodman, these large ensembles typically divided 10 or more musicians into four sections: trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and rhythm. Although the styles of jazz these groups played varied widely, there was, especially in the golden era of the later 1930s and early 1940s, one element common to them all, a quality called “swing” ​— ​the pulsing groove that drove dancers all over the world to previously unimagined heights of ecstatic communion with each other and the music.

On Saturday, September 29, Wynton Marsalis, the preeminent jazz bandleader of our time, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO), a veteran ensemble thoroughly schooled in every aspect of the big band and orchestral traditions, will take the Granada stage for the opening event of the 2018-19 UCSB Arts & Lectures season. While Marsalis and the JLCO are familiar to audiences in Santa Barbara ​— ​thanks to Arts & Lectures, they have been coming here since 2001 ​— ​this show, an evening-length presentation titled Spaces, introduces an element that is at once brand-new and as old as the big band tradition itself, namely the presence of virtuosic dancers as soloists: the jook master Lil Buck and the tap genius Jared Grimes.

Marsalis has been breaking through cultural barriers for decades. It’s amazing to realize that it’s been more than 20 years since he became the first nonclassical composer to win the Pulitzer Prize, an honor he received in 1997 for Blood on the Fields, an ambitious vocal-orchestral suite about American slavery. Since then, he’s been involved in dozens of important projects, most notably the construction of a permanent home for the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, the 100,000-square-foot Frederick P. Rose Hall at Columbus Circle in New York City. When it opened in 2004, this magnificent facility became the first performance, education, and broadcast venue in the world devoted to jazz. Just a few blocks north of Carnegie Hall, Rose Hall stands as a confirmation in bricks and mortar of the permanent position jazz occupies at the heart of American culture, and it would not exist without either the vision and artistry of Marsalis or the collective genius of the musicians of the JLCO.

Never content to rest on his laurels, Marsalis continues to create musical compositions on a grand scale and to tour the world spreading his message that jazz can change your life. In addition to his remarkable gifts as a musician and composer, the bandleader enjoys a prodigious gift for words. Marsalis, who is known for speaking his mind when it comes to calling out racism in whatever form he sees it, has been an outspoken critic of certain aspects of hip-hop, specifically those he perceives as inauthentic minstrelsy intended to amuse and titillate a largely white audience. When he appeared on Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart’s podcast last May, he caught some flak for comparing hip-hop’s misogyny and gangsta poses to Confederate statues, saying the following: “My words are not that powerful. I started saying in 1985 I don’t think we should have a music talking about niggers and bitches and hoes. It had no impact. I’ve said it. I’ve repeated it. I still repeat it. To me, that’s more damaging than a statue of Robert E. Lee.”

Regardless of whether he is expressing his concerns about rap or celebrating a fellow jazz musician’s achievement, Marsalis is never at a loss for words. His phrasing is impeccable, and the lilting way he strings together surprising lists and unexpected clauses mirrors the invention he achieves with his trumpet. Marsalis is without question the greatest popular exponent of musical knowledge in American history since Leonard Bernstein, and it’s a fitting tribute to the centenary of the latter figure that not only will we have the opportunity this weekend to hear the wonderful music that Marsalis has composed for Spaces, but that we will also get to savor his unique and personal way with words as he narrates the various movements of the piece.

When I spoke with him recently by phone, Marsalis was preparing to perform Spaces in Los Angeles, and the conversation ranged widely, covering not only his intentions for the present piece but also his long history with UCSB Arts & Lectures, the proper balance between abstraction and representation in art, and the responsibility of the artist in the modern world. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.

The work you are bringing to Santa Barbara puts two dancers and 15 musicians to work portraying 10 different animals, from chickens and monkeys to elephants, nightingales, and frogs. Why is it called Spaces, and what made the subject of animals appealing to you?

I called it Spaces because it is about the space that animals live in ​— ​not only the space that they inhabit, but also the space that they teach us about by how they live and move. The work portrays the physical, spiritual, and emotional spaces that animals create and that they share with us.

The animal archetype has been of service to humans since Aesop’s fables, serving to educate, entertain, and expand our understanding of the world. We have a long-term relationship with animals, and even though now we usually only see dogs and cats on a regular basis, other animals go on appearing in our mythology. When you are a kid, you read book after book with just animals ​— ​hippos, pigs, Kermit the Frog; I mean, we could go on indefinitely just listing children’s stories with animals. Winnie-the-Pooh, Paddington the bear. Certain types of animals create certain kinds of space. Big animals create one kind of space; little animals create another type of space. And then there’s the human relationship to animals ​— ​Beethoven, Lassie ​— ​we could go on and on.

What do animals have to offer jazz, or what specifically does jazz have to offer the subject of animals?

Jazz is an art form, so it’s connected to everything that’s human. Anything a human being can conceive of or imagine, anything that has to do with human interaction, that has to do with creativity and creation, is in the province of jazz. It’s not possible to find a human thing without some connection to jazz, because that’s just how art forms are. Also, an art form that includes as many people as jazz ​— ​where to participate all you have to do is learn how to play an instrument ​— ​that’s a situation where you’re going to have a lot of different people involved.

How has the response been thus far? Is there something in particular that people really like about this piece?

Yes, people everywhere love the dancers. In Lil Buck and Jared Grimes, we have two geniuses. People are just blown away by their genius and their dexterity and their imagination. It’s kid friendly, and kids respond to the dancers.

In your book Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life, you write about the negative impact of too much abstraction on avant-garde jazz. Is the representational direction of these pieces, which portray the animals through recognizable sounds and movements, a reaction against too much abstraction?

No, not really. If you look closely at the pieces, you’ll see that the first half of most of them are abstractions; it’s often the second half that is much more concrete. I don’t think that the abstract world fights with the concrete world. I feel there’s a natural balance between the two. But when there’s an insistent avant-garde motion toward abstraction, I ask: Why? Why does a chromatic scale make a triad obsolete? That’s not how we live our lives. We don’t say, “I like the way a cocktail tastes, so I’m going to stop drinking coffee” or “I like reading James Joyce, so I’m not going to read the comics again.” You don’t need to be abstract to have validity in art. Pablo Picasso was one of the first in the visual-art world to say, “I can do all of this stuff.” When he went away from cubism as his only direction, he was saying, “I can continue to do this, and I can do other things.” And I think a person like Duke Ellington was always there, because his music was made for audiences who were coming out to hear him for many different reasons. Some were there to dance, while some were seeking other pleasures, and his music was based on keeping all those people happy. He didn’t have the luxury of academic discussion of everything he did.

Speaking of Duke Ellington, I know that he liked to write music with specific members of his orchestra in mind. Do you do that?

Sure, I write for the players we have. Victor Goines, who has been 25 years in the band, I give him stuff I know is complicated, or sometimes a ballad, for his instrument, the clarinet. Ted Nash, I have him on “A Nightingale,” where he plays a kind of late-night, sweet alto. I have [alto saxophonist] Sherman Irby play stuff that comes from the church or is really deep, things that require both a deep blues feeling and bebop sophistication. He has a battle plan of his own. [Trumpeter] Ryan Kisor plays with a lyrical sweetness and harmonic intelligence.

And what about you? Do you compose for your own voice, or do you just play?

[Laughs.] I just take whatever is left over. The trumpet section, we get together and talk it over, and that will kind of determine who gets what.

I know you have a long history with UCSB Arts & Lectures and with the organization’s director, Celesta Billeci. Could you say a few words about that?

Man, I’ve known Celesta since she was a baby, just starting out. We kind of came up in the same time period. I knew her from the very beginning of her career. I always loved her because she has consistently been so intense and for real. She’s like a force of nature. Now we’ve been out here doing this for, I don’t know, 30 years or whatever it is, and when I look at her now I have to smile, because it reminds me of, in those early days, how much of a believer she was in the arts and in bringing people deep experiences. She is so absolutely for real. Her name is always the first one that comes out of my mouth whenever people talk about presenting arts organizations or arts programs on college campuses or arts management. She is the absolute gold standard for this type of work, and even when she was a kid, she had that kind of dedication.

Is it interesting to look back and reflect on the way that someone you have known for decades has grown and changed?

You know it is, and it is actually funny [laughs], because you don’t know it’s going to be like that. You don’t know who is going to last. In the beginning, you don’t know who is going to stay out here … who will stay going after the dream, and who is going to continue to make stuff happen. I’m so proud of her; whenever I see her, it’s just like, what can I say?

In 2016, you performed a long work called The Abyssinian Mass. I recently heard a recording of that piece, and I was deeply impressed not only by the seriousness of the content but also by the swing of the music. How did that come about?

Reverend Calvin O. Butts [pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem] asked me to write something to celebrate the church’s anniversary. The first time we did it, we struggled. It’s a challenging work, but my friends David and Thelma Steward, they supported the piece. They took that leap of faith. Pieces like that take support, because it’s hard to make things on that scale happen. We actually have 15 of these longer pieces, some of them by me and some by other members of the orchestra, and we plan to begin releasing recordings of them over the next few years. It’s something I’m really proud of, and it’s also something that’s really hard to do, so thank you for mentioning it.

In a recent podcast with Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post, you made some remarks about hip-hop and how you feel that some aspects of that music have been damaging to the culture at large. I won’t ask you to comment on that, but I did want to acknowledge that I admire your willingness to take a stand when it comes to aesthetics and morality.

Oh, I don’t mind if you ask about that. I’m not looking for likes on Facebook. I’m out here in the community, and I see the effect that it’s having on kids. And I’m not talking about the whole art form, just one aspect of it. These people who misconstrue that, who insist that I’ve got something against all hip-hop music and not just the negative aspects, I don’t care what they think and say about me.

*Last spring, you introduced a substantial new piece called The Ever Fonky Lowdown that expresses some of your opinions about culture and society. From what I have read, in it you are examining the ways in which people become trapped by false realities. When people agree on something that’s not true, then others live with the consequences. Is that an accurate description of what you are saying? *

Yes, that’s pretty good. It’s about what happens when you are living within an illusion that is so heavy that you can’t get out of it. Questions like, Who am I fighting and why? become both constant and impossible to answer. We will do it again next year in Chicago. The libretto is dark, but the music that goes along with it is kind of happy.

You have come a long way, from winning back-to-back Grammys in multiple categories when you were still in your early twenties to being an international icon today. Will you reflect on that journey?

You know, I made a lot of sacrifices, especially in my personal life, to accomplish what I have, but it’s been such a blessing to play with all these unbelievable musicians over the years, and that has more than compensated. The bottom line is that I am grateful, and I want to prove my gratitude by being for real. As long as I can breathe, I am going to prove my gratitude by my work ethic and by helping the people I believe in to produce the music that’s in them. It’s been a blessing.

After starting in the late 1980s with just a few concerts per year, you built Jazz at Lincoln Center not only into a great organization but also into a great venue on Columbus Circle. How does that feel?

It feels great. There’s no way I could have known we were going to do all that when we started. There were so many people working in so many ways to realize this dream. I was only one part of it.

On Friday morning, September 28, you and the orchestra will be presenting a young people’s program at the Granada for more than 1,000 schoolchildren. What’s that about?

This one is called “What Is Monk?,” and it is our third or fourth education event that we have done on our visits here. We’re going to talk about Thelonious Monk, about his characteristics and his vision, and the musicians and I will be demonstrating his music. Ultimately, the lesson concerns the values that Monk represents, which are the core values of jazz. First comes having the integrity of being yourself, which is something that Monk excelled at. Then there’s the importance of having people in your life who believe in you. That’s what makes great things possible. With that comes an obligation to share your knowledge with others, and Monk was great at that too. Finally, we illustrate through music the value of being part of other people’s development by participating in equal collaboration. Taken together, adopting these ideas and attitudes will change you, and that’s what jazz is all about.

by Charles Donelan

Source: Santa Barbara Independent

Wynton Marsalis and JLCO to interpret the music of Duke Ellington at Barclay

For someone with sterling credentials — a Pulitzer Prize, nine Grammy Awards, two Emmy nominations, a National Medal of Arts, National Humanities Medal, Down Beat Hall of Fame, 7 million albums sold worldwide, a reputation for working tirelessly with young musicians in countless workshops and master classes — it is rather surprising that Wynton Marsalis only wanted to talk about one thing.

Or rather, one person.

“Duke Ellington was one of our greatest leaders in American orchestral music,” said Marsalis, who brings his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to the Irvine Barclay Theatre Tuesday to play an all-Ellington program. “There’s an undeniable timelessness of Duke’s music, and the craftsmanship of his pieces is so great.”

Marsalis, whose group offered a different program at the Hollywood Bowl almost two weeks ago in a joint concert with the Clayton-Hamlton Jazz Orchestra (which will visit the Irvine Barclay in December), will both play trumpet and direct the 15-piece orchestra in pieces written by the legendary Edward Kennedy Ellington (1899-1974), a regal-sounding name befitting the nickname “Duke.”

“He had such a love of people and had a love of romance,” Marsalis continued. “He loved his country. He had an understanding of all the elements of American music, its foundation. He understood the fiddle reel, minstrel song, spiritual, work song, American popular song. He understood groove-based music and the gospel traditions. All of these things are in his music. He invented an original form of orchestration and elevated the American orchestra, the big band, to a high standard. He was a tireless student of music.”

Marsalis has an impressively large repertoire of Ellington — who, like Marsalis, had been honored with a Pulitzer and many Grammys (14, three of them posthumously) — and he still wasn’t sure which works he’ll present at the Irvine Barclay.

It is clear Ellington’s music and approach to life have influenced Marsalis, who also acknowledges influence from his family of musicians: Father Ellis Marsalis Jr., is a jazz pianist, and brothers Branford, Delfeayo and Jason are also jazz musicians, with Branford (who brings his Quartet to Segerstrom Concert Hall in January) attaining international fame, just like Wynton.

Wynton Marsalis initially intended to embark on a classical career, but a 1980 European tour with Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers made him change his mind.

Largely through Marsalis’ efforts, a jazz component was added to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City in 1987. The orchestra was formed the following year. Marsalis became its artistic director and conductor in 1991 and immediately established the orchestra’s focus on jazz history — especially, the music of Elllington.

“Albert Murray, whose philosophy is the foundation of Jazz at Lincoln Center, always said that quality art is the key to our success and should command our focus and direction,” he said. “And the standard is so high: it was set by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, maintained by Art Tatum and Charlie Parker, re-articulated by Miles Davis and Charlie Mingus, among other musicians who spent lifetimes of hours in practice rooms and on uncompromising bandstands, battling to be the best they could be and the most individual they could be.”

By Michael Rydzynski

Source: Los Angeles Times

Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra & Damian Woetzel – Spaces – New York

Lil Buck and Jared Grimes in Spaces. (© Lawrence Sumulong)

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra is a most impressive ensemble; as I listened to them play Wynton Marsalis’s Spaces at the Rose Theater last Friday, the Vienna Philharmonic came to mind. Their playing has confidence, virtuosity, luster, and a wondrous sense of play. Each player is a powerhouse in his own right, further magnified by the give-and-take of his fellow musicians. (And yes, I mean “his”; all the players, at least on this evening, were men. Even the Vienna Philharmonic has more ladies.)

Spaces, composed by the ensemble’s artistic director Wynton Marsalis in 2009, is a kind of jazz Carnival of the Animals, a suite that aims to capture the traits and quirks of this or that particular species. There’s the “Ch-ch-ch-Chicken,” and “Mr. Penguin Please,” “Pachyderm Shout,” and “Bees Bees Bees.” (Even the titles swing.) Marsalis, who plays his silvery trumpet in the back row, introduces each segment in prose both folksy and poetic, warm, erudite, and drily witty. He’s an able raconteur, virtuosic in his turn of phrase and generous in his use of the dramatic pause.

To this musical suite he has added, with the assistance of the show’s choreographer and director Damian Woetzel, the element of dance. The dance comments, illustrates and riffs on ideas and sounds in the music. Like Marsalis’s compositions, it’s neither banally literal, nor thoroughly abstract, but lies somewhere in the middle, deriving its inspiration and energy from currents in the music.

The original dancers, credited as co-choreographers, were Lil Buck and Jared Grimes, each a bravura performer in his own right. Buck is a master of jookin’–a gliding, rippling street-dance from Memphis – and Grimes a virtuoso tapper. Both dances, like flamenco and other vernacular forms, allow for a certain freedom. The structure is set, but within it there are many possible paths to take. Just as in jazz.

On this night, Buck was injured, but performed anyway, mainly with his upper body and arms – both expressive and articulate. Two more dancers were added: Dewitt Fleming Jr., also a tapper, and Virgil Gadson, a hip-hop specialist with a lengthy Broadway resumé. As in the original version, they danced, individually and together, in font of and around the band, sometimes covering broad swathes of stage, sometimes sticking to a small space, focusing in on the details of their refined footwork. As Buck told the dance writer Susan Reiter last year, he and Grimes share “the blessings of the feet.” It’s a sweet, and accurate turn of phrase; their ability to transmit rhythm, feeling and joy through their footwork is truly remarkable.

The result is an enjoyable, if not thoroughly electrifying evening of music and dance. Both the music and the dancing took a while to warm up. In part one, it wasn’t until the “Pachyderm Shout” that the band got into full swing. The musical compositions vary in style; they’re compact and convincingly attuned to the characteristics of each animal. Some, though, like “Ch-Ch-Ch-Chicken” feel more by the numbers. The corresponding dance, a spinning-pecking-strutting affair by Grimes and Buck, bordered on cute. “Monkey In a Tree,” with wild, dissonant chords, was more attention-grabbing. “Pachyderm Shout,” which began with a tuba-washboard-and bass combination, later developed into a screaming-wailing competition for trumpets and trombones (thrilling). And yet, it was was the least convincing as dance. “Leap Frogs” introduced a witty repartee between Buck and Grimes, both dancing on one leg (perhaps as a result of Buck’s injury). It ended with Grimes and Gadson leaping over each other into splits, a trick honed by the legendary Nicholas Brothers.

And yes, buried in these pieces there was a dose of history, with multiple references to past masters. “Mr. Penguin Please,” a suave big band number, was pure Ellington. And the accompanying dance threw in some Fred Astaire, some Charlie Chaplin, and a touch of Bob Fosse. Musically the highlight of the evening was “A Nightingale,” a sweet, lowdown piano blues. (Woetzel would seem to agree, since he had the dancers simply sit and listen.) Marsalis is a reverent student of his artform. But I was also struck by his sharp, unexpected juxtapositions of sound: the bass and cymbals in “Those Sanctified Swallows,” the sweetness of piano and flute in “A Nightingale.”

The dancing was excellent, if not always tremendously focused. Grimes, in particular, shone, with his jagged, playful rhythms, executed on every part of the foot, from instep to edge to pointe. Even injured, Buck exhibited his ability to lose himself in the music, his entire body vibrating to its sounds. Gadson was acrobatic and quick, a non-stop tourbillon of movement. Fleming, the least used, warbled and whispered with his feet. I would have liked to see more.

So much excellence on display, and yet, there was a certain flatness to the evening. Perhaps it was due to the episodic nature of the program, or perhaps it was the fault of Buck’s injury, but Spaces never reached the level of ecstatic play these musicians and dancers are capable of.

by Marina Harss

Source: DanceTabs

Father and son Ellis and Wynton Marsalis showcase taste, technical chops to jazz aficionados

Father and son Ellis and Wynton Marsalis showcase taste, technical chops to jazz aficionados at Tanglewood.

When your dad is your band’s opening act, you should expect the unexpected. Grammy Award-winning jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis probably didn’t expect his 83-year-old father to upstage him on September 1 at Tanglewood, but there were times on Saturday evening when New Orleans jazz legend Ellis Marsalis seemed to eclipse his son — like every time he entered or exited the Shed stage. That’s right: Simply showing up at the venue was enough for the senior Marsalis to elicit prolonged standing ovations from a savvy Shed audience that obviously recognized his stature as a pianist, educator and mentor to generations of storied New Orleans jazz musicians (including not only his own sons, but also people like Harry Connick Jr.). To be sure, Wynton Marsalis received his share of enthusiastic applause on Saturday, but he was obliged to earn it in the usual fashion: on the spot (which he was quite well prepared to do), whereas Wynton’s father earned his accolades over a period of nearly three-quarters of a century. Such modern-day recognitions as Ellis Marsalis received at Tanglewood may be seen as icing on the cake of a seven-decade career in music.

His first chord made you glad to be in a venue where they know how to properly mic a grand piano. His second chord made you glad you were listening to a man with nothing to prove.

After performing, composing and teaching jazz music for over 70 years, Ellis Marsalis is ideally suited to serve audiences of the sort that came to Tanglewood. He understands that even the most sophisticated jazz listener enjoys an old standard once in a while (along with the occasional 12-bar blues number). Accordingly, pieces by Herbie Hancock and other jazz greats appeared on Ellis’ setlist, along with a couple of his own pieces.

Jazz musicians who have something to prove can be hard on audiences. All that proving can quickly become tiresome to casual music listeners when notes of dubious tonal provenance rush out at high velocity measure after measure (as they are wont to do, for example, in the various bebop jazz styles).

Virtuosi of all musical genres often feel obliged to demonstrate their technical chops for the satisfaction of listeners who came into the hall for the express purpose of witnessing virtuosic displays. We look for such displays from musicianssuch as Bela Fleck and Chris Thile, and most of Wynton Marsalis’s fans have similar expectations. The Grammy-winning trumpeter has all the chops one could hope for, and he delivers. But his technique isn’t solely about flash and dazzle. It’s also about taste. And this is where Wynton’s father has played such a crucial role in his son’s musical education. Certainly, Wynton Marsalis is capable of pulling off the flashy stuff. But his father’s influence is most telling when it comes to the more subtle manifestations of the younger man’s musicianship.

Virtuosity can manifest itself in a single note. And, with every note he plays, Wynton Marsalis demonstrates exquisite control over the timbre of his instrument. (He can play the very highest note at the very lowest volume.) It’s not the velocity (or even cleverness) of notes that matters most to Wynton Marsalis. It’s the tone he produces.

Taste is the very essence of the Marsalis family’s musicianship, and it seems to depend almost entirely on Ellis’ tutelage of the countless musicians who have come within his orbit over the last 70 years.

by David Noel Edwards

Source: The Berkshire Edge

Blue Engine Records announces the release of Una Noche Con Rubén Blades

The salsa giant and nine-time GRAMMY® Award-winning singer, songwriter, actor, and activist — collaborated with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in 2014 for an extraordinary series of performances on the Jazz at Lincoln Center stage. On these very special style-straddling, Americas-spanning nights, the worlds of salsa and swing collided. Blue Engine Records today announced this historic concert, which the New York Times called “radically beautiful,” will be available as an album release entitled Una Noche con Rubén Blades on October 19, 2018.

Music-directed by Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra bassist Carlos Henriquez (called an “emerging master in the Latin jazz idiom” by DownBeat magazine), Una Noche con Rubén Blades features Blades, backed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, performing Blades’ own beloved compositions, including “Pedro Navaja,” “Patria,” and “El Cantante,” as well as swing-era standards like “Too Close for Comfort” and “Begin the Beguine.”

“I’ve known Rubén Blades since I was two years old—or at least I feel like I have,” Henriquez says. “His albums—and the sound and the warmth they generated–filled my family’s apartment at 146th and Brook Avenue in the Bronx, and his music was one of my earliest influences.”

“Jazz is the story of taking old parts and building something new,” he continues. “When Rubén joined us for our performances at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, we did exactly that using the Great American Songbook and the Afro-Cuban rhythms that propel all the wonderful music that Rubén sang that evening. The music I arranged for Rubén Blades to perform with the Orchestra sounds like Panama, New Orleans, and New York all mixed into one. Those sounds form the heart of all our stories as musicians, and in combining them we reaffirmed that we’re all in this together.” 

The first single from Una Noche con Rubén Blades, “Ban Ban Quere,” will be available for streaming and download on all mass-market digital platforms on September 7. The album will also be available for preorder on Jazz at Lincoln Center’s webstore as a standalone CD and as a deluxe bundle featuring a limited-edition maraca.

Una Noche con Rubén Blades Track Listing:

1. Carlos Henriquez Introduction (0:39)

2. “Ban Ban Quere” (6:31)

Written by Calixto Varela Gomez

Arranged by Carlos Henriquez

Soloists: Wynton Marsalis (trumpet)

3. “Too Close for Comfort” (5:56)

Written by Jerry Bock, George Weiss, and Larry Holofcener

Arranged by Carlos Henriquez

Soloists: Dan Nimmer (piano), Kenny Rampton (trumpet)

4. “El Cantante” (8:44)

Written by Rubén Blades

Arranged by Carlos Henriquez

Soloists: Chris Crenshaw (trombone)

5. “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” (6:41)

Written by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields

Arranged by Carlos Henriquez

Soloists: Ted Nash (flute), Paul Nedzela (baritone saxophone), Rubén Blades (vocals)

6. “Apóyate en Mi Alma” (5:51)

Written by Luis Demetrio

Arranged by José Madera

Soloists: Victor Goines (soprano saxophone)

7. “Pedro Navaja” (8:10)

Written by Rubén Blades

Arranged by Carlos Henriquez

8. “Begin the Beguine” (7:39)

Written by Cole Porter

Arranged by Carlos Henriquez

Soloists: Seneca Black (trumpet)

9. “Sin Tu Cariño” (7:49)

Written by Rubén Blades and Louie Ramirez

Arranged by Carlos Henriquez

Soloists: Dan Nimmer (piano)

10. “Rubén’s Medley: Ligia Elena / El Número 6 / Juan Pachanga” (12:06)

Written by Rubén Blades

Arranged by Carlos Henriquez

Soloists: Ali Jackson (drums), Carlos Padron (bongos), Bobby Allende (congas), Marc Quiñones (timbales)

11. “Patria” (Encore) (6:59)

Written by Rubén Blades

Soloists: Wynton Marsalis (trumpet)

About Blue Engine Records

Blue Engine Records, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s platform that makes its vast archive of recorded concerts available to jazz audiences everywhere, launched on June 30, 2015. Blue Engine Records releases new studio and live recordings as well as archival recordings from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s performance history that date back to 1987 and are part of the R. Theodore Ammon Archives and Music Library. Since the institution’s founding in 1987, each year’s programming is conceived and developed by Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis with a vision toward building a comprehensive library of iconic and wide-ranging compositions that, taken together, make up a canon of music. These archives include accurate, complete charts for the compositions – both old and new – performed each season. Coupled with consistently well-executed and recorded music performed by Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, this archive has grown to include thousands of songs from hundreds of concert dates. The launch of Blue Engine is aligned with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s efforts to cultivate existing jazz fans worldwide and turn new audiences onto jazz. For more information on Blue Engine Records, visit blueenginerecords.org

Wynton Marsalis finds a model for life in his father, Ellis

LENOX — For Wynton Marsalis, integrity is at jazz music’s core — and his father Ellis’.

“He was always the least-prejudiced person I had ever met,” 56-year-old Wynton told The Eagle during a telephone interview Monday.

As a child in New Orleans, Wynton would often attend Ellis’ piano performances around the city. An educator who didn’t receive much recognition until later in life, Ellis toiled at sparsely attended venues.

“He could play so many gigs with very few people there when I was growing up,” Wynton said.

The 83-year-old Ellis won’t have that problem on Saturday night when his quintet opens for his son’s own five-piece group at Tanglewood’s Koussevitzy Music Shed, a venue Wynton knows well from his time as a Tanglewood Music Center student and concerts since. A world-renowned trumpeter and composer, Wynton has attracted rapt crowds for decades, though often while touring with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The New York City institution’s artistic director cherishes opportunities to perform with a smaller ensemble.

“There’s more open space to play. In a big band, we improvise, but it’s not as much space. For the rhythm section, it’s more open and freer. Everybody’s always happy to play in that context,” Marsalis said. “It’s like if you have a family of 13, and you’re obviously eating at a big table, and then all of a sudden there’s four or five people sitting there. There’s a lot more food.”

The Marsalis clan has cooked up an outsized portion of contemporary jazz fare. In addition to Ellis and Wynton, who in 1997 became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, brothers Branford, Delfeayo and Jason have all made contributions to the genre, particularly Branford, the pop-oriented counterpart to the younger and more traditional Wynton.

“All of us were able to go and get some recognition,” Wynton said.

Consequently, they raised their father’s profile, but Wynton can still easily conjure the days when Ellis played to empty rooms. Take, for example, one gig at Lu and Charlie’s on New Orleans’ Rampart Street when Wynton was about 11. Ellis was scheduled to play until 2:30 a.m., but at 2, the only spectators left were young Wynton and a drunk.

“I walked up to the piano and said, ‘No one is here. Let’s go home,’” Wynton recalled.

A 25-minute drive to their house awaited. But Ellis didn’t budge.

“He said, ‘Man, this gig ends at 2:30.’ I said, ‘Man, nobody’s in here but me and this dude, and look at him.’ I pointed to the guy. It was like a funny scene in a movie. And my father says, ‘Man, sit your a— down and listen to this music for the last 30 minutes.’ And that’s what I did,” Wynton said.

Ellis’ devotion to the gig has guided the way Wynton carries himself musically.

“What would make somebody play like that at 2:15 in the morning? I want to be like that,” Wynton recalled thinking. “So, that’s when I made up my mind that I wanted to represented that aspect of what he was about.”

Wynton doesn’t just view integrity in behavioral terms, of the uprightness in persistent jazz musicians such as his father and legends such as Duke Ellington. He views it as an artistic concept, too. Marsalis has long opposed the genre deviating from its blues and swing elements that gained prominence in the early 20th century. In 1988, he penned a New York Times piece called “What Jazz Is — and Isn’t” that cited early jazz writers’ refusal to reckon with the genre’s mechanics and studied practices. Instead, these scribes attributed jazz success to innate talent rather than education, allowing for a movement away from jazz’s fundamentals, according to Marsalis.

“The noble-savage cliche has prevailed over the objective fact of the art — and this is manifest in my generation’s inability to produce more than a few musicians dedicated to learning and mastering the elements like blues and swing that gave Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker such unarguable artistic power,” Marsalis wrote.

In a 2017 interview with The New York Times on the eve of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 30th season, Marsalis hadn’t backed off rejecting the genre-defying trend of 21st-century music.

“We are a music that is constantly asked to abandon its own identity to become another thing. Why? What’s wrong with our identity? We’re not going to do that at Jazz at Lincoln Center as long as I’m here,” he said.

On Monday, Marsalis reiterated that jazz cannot fall victim to chasing popular reception. It must remain true to its principles.

“Are you going to give up on the Constitution because it seems like it’s not working?” he asked.

He’s not opposed to creatively thinking about jazz’s underpinnings, but ignoring them is unacceptable.

“The principles are flexible because they are an approach and a way up, but there are also things that lie outside of that way up. When you believe in things, you’re not checking the temperature of, ‘What do people think today? Am I relevant right now?’” he said.

Marsalis remains culturally prominent today through his ceaseless artistic and educational work that binds music to American history, particularly its racial issues. He also garners attention for his provocative public statements, such as those censuring hip-hop this spring.

More recently, he has had an opportunity to reflect on a couple musical greats’ legacies. The late Leonard Bernstein, whose birth centenary was celebrated Saturday at Tanglewood, taught Marsalis at the Lenox institution.

“I loved him. I knew him. I talked with him. We discussed things about teaching music. … I liked the inclusiveness of his vision, the fact that he was trying to bring all the strains of our music together,” Marsalis said.

Marsalis also wrote an essay about Aretha Franklin after her death in August. The two often exchanged emails.

“I wasn’t actually going to write it, but I thought, hey, I had such a history with her and talked with her so many times that some people wouldn’t know how much she actually knew about jazz [if I didn’t write it],” he said.

As for his own legacy, Marsalis hopes that people will one day mine his 1,000-plus compositions, but he’s not optimistic.

“There’s always kind of a fascination with me philosophically and why I’m not a populist. That’s how it is; I’m not complaining because I’ve been so much more fortunate and successful than I ever thought I would be, to maintain the level of seriousness that I’ve maintained, so I don’t want it to come off like a complaint,” he said. “ … Maybe there will be some discussion of [my] music, but I’m still waiting for that to happen with Duke Ellington’s music. So, I don’t know that I’m that hopeful for my own.”

by Benjamin Cassidy

Source: The Berkshire Eagle

Wynton Marsalis talks Tanglewood, a fateful audition at 17, and his father’s enduring influence

The respective quintets of Wynton Marsalis and his 83-year-old father, pianist Ellis Marsalis, will perform Saturday to help close out the 2018 season at Tanglewood. The younger Marsalis, 56, plans to perform four new compositions of his own, collectively titled “The Integrity Suite,” backed by his longtime rhythm section of pianist Dan Nimmer, bassist Carlos Henriquez, and drummer Ali Jackson. Recent Juilliard graduate Julian Lee, 22, will round out the quintet on tenor saxophone and clarinet. Small-group performances have become a rarity for Marsalis, who usually performs leading the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. But he is no stranger to Tanglewood. Speaking to the Globe by phone this week, he detailed how, in 1979 at age 17, he’d successfully auditioned for the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and its artistic director, the late composer and conductor Gunther Schuller.

Q. Your performance on Saturday celebrates the New Orleans Tricentennial. Will you play music associated with New Orleans?

A. It’s not really the New Orleans Tricentennial. I mean, it is — but the show is not really like that. It’s just modern jazz. My father’s playing. I don’t know exactly what he’s playing, but we’ll probably play a song or two together, depending on how he feels. You know, my mother passed away last year. It’s good to get him out and playing.

The music we grew up playing is more of a modern music. We played at the family Baptist church marching band in high school, some traditional music, but the music my father and James Black and that generation of musicians played in New Orleans had a different sound. We knew the music of my father and James Black and Kidd Jordan, all these New Orleans musicians. We were always in camps and stuff, studying with them.

Q. Is there a difference when you’re playing in a little club with a small combo versus your shows with the whole orchestra?

A. Yeah, it’s less formal to be in the club. Music always feels differently based on the setting. If you’re comfortable in a concert hall, that can be just as relaxing or as natural as playing in a club. But when you’re late at night in the House of Tribes, everybody is dancing and singing and shouting. With those smaller groups, we always had that feeling. When we played at the Village Vanguard, we had that vibe. I think I make a lot of announcements on that [“Live at the House of Tribes”] recording, and I wanted to have that feeling people had about the music.

Q. Do you think you’ll do much talking from the stage at Tanglewood?

A. Tanglewood is important for me. It changed my understanding of a lot of things. I was auditioned by the great Gunther Schuller, may he rest in peace. And when I came up here, we played Shostakovich’s Fifth under Leonard Bernstein, Prokofiev under Leonard Bernstein. It connected me to the tradition of the Boston Symphony. I learned so much that summer. It was transformative for me as a musician. I’m one of the biggest fans of Tanglewood in the world. Whenever I come to Tanglewood it means a great deal to me.

It’s not because I’m talking to you that I’m saying it. I took the audition totally by accident, and [originally] I wasn’t auditioning for the first Music Center Orchestra; I was auditioning for the younger orchestra. But when the auditions were held in New Orleans, I caught like four buses to get to his audition. It was pouring down rain. It was so far from my house — it was all the way on the other side of town, at the University of New Orleans — and when I got there, I was absolutely soaking wet. Gunther, who was supposed to be doing the audition, wasn’t there. He canceled the audition.

So I still didn’t have something to do that summer. I took my Juilliard audition in New York in March of that year, that’s 1979. Coming back from the Juilliard audition, I got lost and walked by the Wellington Hotel, and there was a sign [announcing Tanglewood Music Center auditions]. It was absolutely random. I walked in, and they were getting ready to stop. So I signed up, I put my age, 17, and the lady who was in the front said, “Oh, you’re 17, you can’t audition for this orchestra. You have to be 18 to get in.” And Gunther Schuller, because he was finished auditioning, said, “Who is this guy?” I said, “I’m a trumpet player, I’m coming from my Juilliard audition.” He looked at my trumpet case and said, “Let him come in and audition.” I was prepared for my Juilliard audition, so I had all my excerpts and everything from them, because I was determined to get out of New Orleans. He saw the thing, said, “Play the Brandenburg Concerto . . .” He said, “Man, you can play. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but let me think about it.” And then they sent me a letter saying I was accepted.

And then through the years, of course, Gunther was a mentor of mine. I would play for him. We would discuss and argue about music. I learned a lot well into manhood. I was so glad to see him at the Brubeck Institute, maybe a year before he died, and I was so happy that I had the opportunity to publicly talk about the impact that he had had on my musicianship. Like a New Orleans kind of thing, it was very impactful for me.

With me it was jazz, you come from New Orleans, believing in the music and also writing so much different music and trying to have an opportunity to participate. I was so fortunate. And also having a philosophical frame of reference, I was able to make a different type of assessment of what was going on. A lot of that came from my father. To see him struggle with the music, it made him be very philosophical about the meaning of it, because he certainly was not making money playing.

Q. A lot of times people want to be a musician, and their parents will say, “Make sure you have a backup plan.” The story is that your dad said, “Make sure you don’t have one, because that way you have to succeed.” Is that true?

A. That’s right. I’ll tell you the whole story. I had received a lot of scholarships — this was back in the time when if a black student made really good grades academically, schools would pursue you. So I had a lot of scholarships not playing music. And all my teachers were saying, “Don’t throw your brain away on music,” because they didn’t respect music. My mama was like, “If you go into music you’re going to struggle just like your daddy did. There’s no money in this. He’s struggled his entire life. You’ve seen it.” I asked my father what he thought I should do, and he said, “Do you really want to do this?” I said, “Nah, I’m going to be a musician.” And he said, “Don’t have nothing to fall back on.”

He was right, because you have to do it. If you have a way to not do it, you’re going to find that way. When I left home I had all my stuff in a box — you know, some jeans, some shirts. My father came and said, “Is that all your stuff in the box?” I was ready to get out of my house, and I said, “Yeah, that’s my stuff.” I was getting kind of testy with him. He said, “Just remember, you can go back to the contents in this box and you’ll be OK.”

Wynton Marsalis Quintet

With a special appearance by the Ellis Marsalis Quintet. At Tanglewood, Koussevitzky Music Shed, Lenox, Sept. 1 at 7 p.m. Tickets $29-$119, 888-266-1200, www.bso.org

by Bill Beuttler

Source: Boston Globe

Wynton Marsalis on Aretha Franklin’s All-Caps Emails and ‘Healing’ Voice

In the wake of Aretha Franklin’s death from pancreatic cancer at age 76 on Aug. 16, Wynton Marsalis, managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, writes in an exclusive essay for Billboard about Franklin’s encyclopedic knowledge of jazz, her timeless music and the hilarious all-caps emails she’d send friends.

I first met Ms. Franklin in the late ‘80s and was so excited, I had to slap myself back to reality. Afterward, I called my momma and told her. She said, “Boy, I hope you remembered your manners and didn’t act like a fool in front of that lady.” I called Ms. Franklin ma’am so many times, she asked me if I was alright. I told her that I had listened to recordings of her father’s preaching. She was surprised, but she passed over that to talk about all of the jazz musicians she knew growing up. A roll call of greats came tumbling out with funny personal anecdotes for each name, from obscure figures like John Kirby to famous legends like Art Tatum, connecting everyone and everything.

For us, growing up on the black side of Kenner, Louisiana, in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, she was more than a music star. We perceived her to be a stalwart hero in the struggle for American civil rights alongside strong, no-nonsense people like Fannie Lou Hamer and Barbara Jordan. I can vividly recall my momma and her friends loving Ms. Franklin’s sound with an excruciating intensity. They could never decide whether to sing with her or co-sign her, as if in church. So they did both, interrupting the sing-along with “Sing, baby. Talk about it, girl! Tell it!” You could see and feel the healing as her sound got all up inside ‘em, inspiring a timeless moment of cathartic joy and starkly illuminating difficult lives that were troubled with so many sorrows.

As the ‘70s gave way to the ‘80s, different styles of music became more popular, and our country slowly eased away from the promises of the civil rights movement. Still, she was out here, hovering overhead like a Goddess in some Pantheon, able to trap us when we left the beaten path in an ambrosial web of soul. With the passage of time, you understood that Aretha Franklin represented a depth of human engagement not relegated to a given time and space. Her sound itself became unyielding triumph over the blues of life that scar and strengthen us all.

In 2012, we were scheduled to do a concert with her. She and I ended up talking about all kinds of musical things. She told stories the same way she sang, with a piercing knowingness. Ms. Franklin had a habit of emailing the continuation of phone conversations ALL IN CAPS. First, a warm salutation. Then, her personal and professional relationships intertwined as she delivered so much history in an original and conversational manner. On the phone, I once asked her about the great gospel singers Albertina Walker and Dorothy Love of the ‘50s. Later she emailed: DORTHY LOVE WAS CALLED DOT LOVE. SHE WAS COMPETITIVE WITH ALBERTINA WALKER FOR THE LEAD OF THE WORLD FAMOUS CARAVANS OUT OF CHICAGO. WHEN I WAS 13, ALBERTINA AND I TRAVELED WITH MY DAD TO SEE THE CARAVANS. DOT WAS OUT OF BIRMINGHAM, ALA. THEY WERE 2 PEOPLE IN GOSPEL WHO HAD LITTLE TO NO VOICE, BUT SO MUCH SPIRIT AND SAVOIR FAIRE, THEY COULD WRECK A HOUSE!!!

She would refer to jazz musicians of all eras, from Count Basie to Mulgrew Miller, and might touch on anything from a friend of hers dating John Coltrane to Miles Davis stealing her bass player: “LISTENING TO COLTRANE LAST EVE, DON’T YOU LOVE WHAT HE DID WITH MY FAV THINGS! I SPENT MONTHS AT A TIME WITH HIM AT THE VILLAGE GATE, AND ART BLAKEY, HORACE SILVER, FREDDIE HUBBARD, JUNIOR MANCE ETC!!!…..

And she loved the piano: HAVE YOU EVER HEARD DORTHY DONEGAN ? (PIANIST) AND GENIUS. MY FATHER WANTED TO SEE IF I COULD, AT 15, EMULATE HER ON PIANO!!!! SHE AND OSCAR PETERSON AND ART TATUM WERE GUEST IN OUR HOME. EVERY TIME ART CAME TO TOWN, HE WENT TO OUR CHURCH ON SUNDAYS AFTER HIS SAT PERFORMANCE!!!

She had an extra-human way of expressing things with strong punctuations, reminiscent of Louis Armstrong: COLTRANE AND THE FELLAS USED TO ALL BE IN THIS SMOKE FILLED ROOM AFTER THEIR SET AND THIS YOUNG GIRL (ME) WOULD HAVE TO COME THRU THEIR DRESSING ROOM TO GET TO MINE. THEY WOULD BE LOUD ……….UNTIL I CAME IN. THEN…EVERYBODY GOT QUIET, NEVER SAID ANYTHING. ALWAYS GENTLEMAN! RIGHT THRU THE MIDDLE OF THEIR DRESSING ROOM. HAHA HAHA !!!!!! OH BACK IN THE DAY!!!! THERE’S A MILLION STORIES WYNTON !

She was aspirational, once saying, “I don’t only sing what I know, I sing what I want to know. I don’t only sing what is true, I sing what I want to be true, and maybe me singing it will make it be true.“ And she was the definition of soul, always doing her best to make you feel better even when signing off: OK, WYNTON TAKE GOOD CARE!! LOVE YOU MUCH. I AM COOKING OX TAIL SOUP TODAY FOR THE CHURCH. I’M OFF. And she was, ‘til the next time.

Wynton Marsalis

Source: Billboard

Louis Armstrong Stadium Dedication Ceremony

Wednesday, August 22 • 11:30 am

Free and Open to the Public

On Wednesday, August 22, the USTA will officially open this state-of-the-art stadium with a dedication ceremony on “Queens Day” at the US Open. The ceremony will feature USTA Chairman of the Board and President Katrina Adams, who will be joined by John McEnroe, who won all four of his US Open singles titles in Louis Armstrong, and by a special performance led by JAZZ at Lincoln Center Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis. There will also be remarks from Oscar Cohen, Louis Armstrong’s longtime manager and the Founder of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation.

Following the dedication ceremony, McEnroe will be joined by his brother Patrick as well as James Blake and Michael Chang for the honorary first match to be played in the new stadium. US Open Qualifying matches are planned to be staged all day and into the evening on Thursday, August 23 in the new Louis Armstrong Stadium.

Wynton Marsalis with Ibrahim Maalouf and WM Quintet featuring Ellis Marsalis at Jazz in Marciac 2018

Jazz in Marciac 2018

On July 27, 2018, The groups of both Ibrahim Maalouf and Wynton Marsalis join forces at the Marciac Jazz Festival along side a dozen other trumpeters to premiere a new work written specifically for this special occasion.

On July 31, 2018, Family patriarch Ellis Marsalis joins his sons, Branford and Wynton at Jazz in Marciac. The band will explore the music of John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman as well a few original compositions written specifically for the occasion. Watch the live webcast on July 31 at 5pm EDT (11pm CEST) on wyntonmarsali.org/live on on Wynton’s Facebook page