Wynton Marsalis's Blog, page 79

Jazz as conversation - Marsalis explores instincts, teamwork behind a good performance

Great jazz requires a strange alchemy of instinct and expertise, of empathy and teamwork from its musicians — a fact few know better than famed artist and composer Wynton Marsalis. Jazz is a conversation, but a nuanced, swift, and complicated one, he said.

At Sanders Theatre on Wednesday, Marsalis and a band of all-star musicians both discussed and demonstrated how to achieve that balance in “At the Speed of Instinct: Choosing Together to Play and Stay Together,” the fourth of Marsalis’ six-part lecture series at Harvard that began in 2011. Coming just two day’s after Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon, the performance provided a collective respite for the campus.

“No one knows better than Wynton that art and music are for times of sorrow as well as celebration, that the community they build is more important than ever as we turn to one another for comfort and for strength,” President Drew Faust said at the start of program. “He shows us that music is a means of capturing human experience that connects us to something larger than ourselves.”

“No one knows better than Wynton that art and music are for times of sorrow as well as celebration,” said President Drew Faust at the start of the program.

Marsalis and his band began the night by playing a piece that Marsalis had written earlier that day to commemorate the city’s, and the country’s, anguish over the bombings.

“Sometimes the expression of grief is such a heavy feeling that only playing will suffice,” said Marsalis, managing and artistic director of jazz at Lincoln Center.

Jazz’s ability to resonate with people in times of deep sadness — or carefree happiness — stems in part from its ability to both harness and transcend time, to capture a moment and build on it through improvisation, he said.

“Ours is a time-obsessed time,” he said. “The art of jazz is the mastery of time, thousands of decisions made in an instant for the duration of a song. When we play, there is a supreme cognizance of the present, of the energy in being present, and of the intensity of presenting a collective insight into successive moments of present-ness.

“Hmm, that’s a mouthful,” he added.

Jazz musicians’ constant adjustments, their awareness of things changing from moment to moment, make jazz unique among Western dance music, he said.

“Together, you discover that adjusting to one another is as important a skill as soloing,” he said.

Jazz offers other unexpected lessons as well, he said: that sometimes the best solution to a group’s problem is not to play, that sometimes “you can create more freedom by sacrificing your own.”

With its intense focus on time, jazz teaches that “everyone lives with their own relationship to time,” he said. “Jazz people will never press you about where you were or who you were with or what time you did this or that.”

And in a nation that is engaged in constant battles over cultural change, jazz offers “the art of managing change without losing the focus on substance.”

As technology takes over more and more aspects of daily life, he said, jazz can remind Americans to connect with each other, and to their musical and cultural history. After all, you can’t play good jazz without being rooted in the moment and focusing on your fellow musicians — a rare thing in an era when much of popular music can be produced without two musicians ever setting foot in the same room, he added.

“Jazz teaches you how to be a person, and how to ripen your personhood through empathy,” Marsalis said. “Even at its most complex, it tells you: Everything is going to work out because we’re going to make it work out.”

In the performance’s second half, Marsalis and his band — tenor saxophonist Walter Blanding, bassist Carlos Henriquez, drummer Ali Jackson, and pianist Marcus Roberts — brought Marsalis’ insights to life.

They walked the audience through four foundational jazz styles (swing, blues, Afro-Cuban Hispanic, and ballad), stopping after each one to explain how they had played off the others, had read their decisions, and had reacted to where the improvisation was headed.

Often, that means listening with as much intensity as you play, the musicians said. In a way, the band’s playing amounted to a conversation that none but the most trained members of audience could understand.

“It’s like if you’re talking to somebody — they want to talk too,” Roberts said.

Blanding agreed that listening was crucial.

“That collective intelligence matters,” Blanding said. When he isn’t playing sax, he said, he could start thinking about what he’d play next. But that approach doesn’t always work: “When you try to reattach yourself to what’s happening [with the rest of the band], you often find yourself out of place.”

The band’s instinctual interactions require a “tremendous amount of concentration,” Marsalis said, that can take years of practice for its members to master. It also requires humility and restraint, especially from the rhythm section, Jackson said.

“Drums have a lot of power, so you have to be sensitive about the use of the power,” he said. “It’s like if a king just killed his whole community — there’d be nobody to worship him.”

The band, and the audience, laughed. “That was a real look into the psychology of a drummer,” Marsalis said.

Source: harvard.edu

Listen up, says Marsalis - Master class at the Boston Arts Academy

Photos by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

When it comes to playing together, listening is crucial, Wynton Marsalis told the students attending his master class at the Boston Arts Academy. The trumpeter also nudged the young players to listen to each other, and to simply “play soft.”

As many parents can attest, rousing a child from sleep to make it to the bus stop can be a difficult task. Doing so during a vacation week would seem near impossible. But on Thursday, a group of students from Boston and Cambridge happily rose from bed and made it to class. The reason? Wynton Marsalis was in the house.

For an hour and a half the famous trumpeter conducted a master class at the Boston Arts Academy, the city’s only public high school for the visual and performing arts.

Double bass player Daniel Winshall, a 15-year-old from Jamaica Plain, was running behind for the session and feared his teacher would yell at him for being late. Instead, Marsalis singled out his playing.

“My man on the bass, you are an unbelievable bass player. I’ve got to give you an A-plus, plus, plus, plus, plus,” said Marsalis, who joked about taking Winshall on the road. “You are for real, man.”

Since 2011, Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, has wowed audiences at Harvard with a six-part lecture-concert series, “Hidden in Plain View: Meanings in American Music.” On Wednesday at Sanders Theatre, he delivered the fourth installment, looking at collaboration and improvisation.

Education is important to the jazz great — in his role at Lincoln Center he acts as a mentor and rehearses and performs with student musicians — and in all his visits to Harvard he’s made time to engage with local students and fans. Thursday morning he was in full teaching mode, listening to jazz ensembles from the Academy and the Berklee City Music program and offering advice.

“I am going to joke around with y’all and mess with you,” he told the students. “It’s all out of love.”

The trumpeter was true to his word, offering encouragement but not hesitating to gently reprimand the young players for not being familiar with some of the early recordings of the music they were playing, sometimes even the artists themselves.

“How many people actually know the style of this band?” he asked a group on stage who had just played the standard “All of Me,” about Count Basie’s famous orchestra from the 1950s. “Don’t lie, ’cause I’m going to ask you to name some of the albums.” No hands went up.

“You are not going to sound good playing this music without listening to it,” he said, urging the students to not only listen to original and early recordings but to research and learn about expert musicians and their styles.

When it comes to playing together, listening is crucial, said Marsalis, who also nudged the young players to listen to each other, and to simply “play soft.”

“One of the many things you learn about playing jazz is how to play in balance. What does playing in balance mean? Shhhhh.”

Faraday Julien Fontimus waited anxiously for Marsalis to arrive for the class. When it happened, just before 10 a.m., he was almost too excited to look, briefly covering his face and turning to the wall in disbelief. A longtime fan, the 18-year-old trumpeter, who plans to attend Berklee College of Music, hopes to follow in Marsalis’ footsteps and become a music educator.

“He teaches how much jazz can affect one person’s life,” Fontimus said, adding, “I want to be able to give that on to my own students in the future.”

Fontimus was in the audience in Sanders Theatre the night before, carefully studying Marsalis’ movements, hoping to “snatch something that he does with his hands,” and observing the intensity he brings to the stage.

During the class Marsalis urged the young trumpeter to study the music.

“You’ve got a lot of feeling, you’re lovable … I don’t know you but I want to hug you,” said Marsalis. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to know the chords for this tune. … You need to get with the rhythm section and learn these chord changes. … I want the level of your playing to be up on the level of your humanity.”

Afterward, Fontimus remained upbeat, despite the critique.

“It was very fun, it was very informative and it added a lot to my playing, and now I have a lot of stuff to practice. … He showed that he loves us. He is enthusiastic for the music. I am not taking it to heart. I know what to do now to become a better musician and luckily, in the future, if we meet again, he will hear the difference.”

Marsalis told the students to practice the rhythms and the dynamics of every piece before trying to play it through, to learn notes backwards and forwards, and to be accurate. And play without music, Marsalis added. Develop your ear, he told the students, by trying to repeat jingles and everyday tunes.

Marsalis also encouraged the students to play as much as possible and to work on perfecting their character as much as their musicianship. “Try to find gigs, because there’s an axiom that says what you do is what you will do. If you complain, you’re going to complain. If you don’t practice, you’re not going to practice. If you whine, you are going to whine. If you work gigs, you are going to work gigs.

“You are always making yourself into you,” Marsalis added. “At every moment, you are making yourself into yourself. So if you have a work ethic, you are going to have a work ethic. So the things you want to do and be, do that right now.”

Marsalis tapped 16-year-old bassist Christoff Glaude to help him make a point about chord progressions. Glaude admitted to being nervous. But his fear quickly subsided, he said, as the pair started to play.

“It felt good because me and him kind of connected. When you play music … you have to kind of feel the other person. I kind of felt what he was playing and I tried to have a conversation through music.”

Source: Harvard Gazette

Jazz At Lincoln Center Launches New Tuition Free Education Program

Jazz at Lincoln Center launches the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra (JLCYO) program, a new tuition free initiative for local students.

Twenty high school student musicians from the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut) who meet the program admission requirements will be selected to comprise the JLCYO. The musicians will be provided with the opportunity to enhance their musical education with the finest professional training and performance opportunities. Applications are due on Friday, May 10th.

Members of the JLCYO will rehearse weekly, learning big band repertoire and performance techniques from JLCYO Director Vincent Gardner, members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and JALC Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis. The JLCYO, collaborating with professional artists and a choir of high school singers from New York City public schools, will perform sacred music by jazz legend Duke Ellington at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage on Sunday, March 23, 2014, as part of a year-long creative learning project exploring Ellington’s music, developed in partnership with Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute.

“We are thrilled to partner with Jazz at Lincoln Center for Ellington’s Sacred Music, our creative learning project next season,” said Sarah Johnson, Director of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. “The project will engage talented high school musicians from throughout the New York area and we are particularly excited that the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra will provide continued year-round musical opportunities and instruction for the participating instrumentalists.”

“An understanding of Ellington’s music is an essential ingredient for our young people; both in terms of their 21st century skills-collaboration, creativity, communication, critical thinking, and as an expansion of their individual humanity,” says Todd Stoll, Vice President of Education, Jazz at Lincoln Center. “Duke Ellington is a true American genius and these young people will come to the full knowledge that his legacy is part of their birthright as citizens.”

Click here for more information about eligibility and admission requirements for the JLCYO

Wynton Marsalis at The Grammy Museum at LA Live

Wynton Marsalis is the latest artist to be added to our fourth-floor Enduring Traditions permanent exhibition. Four Enduring Traditions pods, lined with unique artifacts and oversize imagery, beckon you to explore the history of some of America’s most significant musical traditions: pop, folk, sacred, classical, blues, and jazz. Inside, vintage footage and interviews with a broad spectrum of musical artists capture the essence of the music.

Other recent additions to these musical time capsules serve to highlight the careers of three distinguished artists and to showcase each artist’s contributions to R&B, soul, gospel or blues. Also on display in the Enduring Traditions exhibition are GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award winners Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, and GRAMMY Award-winning blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dudamel Gustavo and more.

Wynton Marsalis returns to Harvard for the fourth in his series of lectures-performance

“We will discuss and demonstrate the techniques, concepts, methods, opportunities and objectives that encourage spontaneous, intelligent and cohesive group decision-making in our music. We will also illuminate how each member of the quintet asserts, accompanies and adjusts to balance the freedom of improvisation with the sacrificial demands of finding and maintaining our common rhythm, known as swing.”

Wynton

Titled as: “At the Speed of Instinct: Choosing Together to Play and Stay Together”, the new lecture-performance features Wynton Marsalis with Dan Nimmer, piano; Ali Jackson, drums; Carlos Henriquez, bass; Walter Blanding, tenor sax—on* Wednesday, April 17* at 7 pm in Sanders Theatre.

Free tickets for Harvard affiliates are available beginning Tuesday, April 9, and for the public beginning Thursday, April 11, through the Harvard Box Office, 617.496.2222 (TTY 617.495.1642), www.boxoffice.harvard.edu

At the Octoroon Balls: String Quartet No. 1 Now Available in our Sheet Music Store

We are happy to announce the availability of the score and parts to Wynton’s first and only string quartet: At the Octoroon Balls. The sheet music is presented in two formats: PDF downloads which can be printed at home; or a professional set of parts and score printed, bound and shipped by Subito Music.

• Full score (PDF Download – print at home) $25

• Full set of parts and score (PDF Download – print at home) $75

• Full set of parts and score (Printed, bound and shipped by Subito music) $120

Wynton Marsalis and Suzan-Lori Parks discussing music and American identity

On February 28, the Public Forum continued its season of Duets devoted to music with an insightful conversation about our songs, our memories, and America’s troubled relationship to its rich artistic heritage.

Two of the most thoughtful people in the American arts came together at Joe’s Pub for this Public Forum Duet: Wynton Marsalis (Pulitzer and Grammy-winning composer, musician, author, and Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center) and Suzan-Lori Parks (Topdog/Underdog, Porgy and Bess, Master Writer Chair of The Public Theater).

An Oratorio of History With History of Its Own

By the time of Wynton Marsalis’s 1994 oratorio, “Blood on the Fields,” written for three singers and a 15-piece band, his scale for musical structure and organizational planning was big and getting bigger.

He was 32 then. Jazz at Lincoln Center hadn’t yet become a constituent part of the larger Lincoln Center organization, and the idea of a dedicated theater for jazz hadn’t even been proposed. But he had already written extended works and had developed a framework for identifying and explaining jazz’s standards of excellence, and for linking the music to the history of black Americans and the notion of cultural survival. Never before had such power resided within one jazz musician, and those who doubted him wanted to be impressed on every possible level — especially after “Blood” won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for music.

In its latest rerun on Friday at Rose Theater — I saw the second night of a three-night stand — the band, conducted by Mr. Marsalis, put on a powerful and slightly streamlined version of a piece that once felt challengingly long and heavy. The singers tell a story of two slaves transported to America, Jesse (Kenny Washington) and Leona (Paula West), a man and a woman, a prince and a commoner. Jesse tries to escape, but is caught and brought back; with the help of a sage named Juba (Gregory Porter), he adjusts his view of the world, learns how to love both Leona and his new land properly, and by the end the couple prepare to seek freedom together.

Mr. Marsalis’s vocabulary is referential, but also intricate and cumulatively distinct. It has not been absorbed throughout jazz, which is probably why a 19-year-old piece of music remains strangely undated. “You Don’t Hear No Drums,” Jesse’s first song, and a theme that returns later, rested on careful, slow, contained New Orleans funk, with streamers of orchestrated dissonance. Mr. Marsalis’s trumpet solo toward the end of that song, when the rest of the band emptied out except for the rhythm section, grew battering and forceful. (He came out front again in “Back to Basics,” where he pulled articulated rips and chuckles from the horn among sections of melodic improvising over midtempo swing.) There was enough space here, too, for relative quiet and contemplation, like the lovely trickling countermelodies in “Will the Sun Come Out?,” leading toward an unaccompanied slow-blues by the pianist Eric Reed that made the audience talk back.

No major revisions have taken place. Even with strong new singers, “Blood” sounded much as I remembered it from the 1990s, if about 15 minutes shorter, with some solos and interstitial material cut. (Three of its principal soloists were still in place: Mr. Marsalis on trumpet, Mr. Reed on piano and Victor Goines on saxophones and clarinet.) But the time in between has made it a different listening experience.

At this point we really know what kind of composer the 51-year-old Mr. Marsalis is, rather than what any of us would like him to be. He loves dazzling surface strategies of harmony and counterpoint and timbral combinations; he stacks rhythms and reduces them to slow and contained stomps, played here by the drummer Ali Jackson with tambourine, kick drum and high-hat. He won’t undersell big ideas: he repeats and extends for effect, and parts of “Blood” still feel about a third too long. He often wants to tell the story of jazz and American music inside another story, so this one — about how love, the highest form of human flexibility, becomes the precondition for moving past slavery — comes with intimations of Ellington’s late suites, Mingus, Coltrane, the blues, spirituals and parade and string-band music. Mr. Marsalis is a big-gesture artist; that’s just the way it is.

Also, small-gesture artists don’t get theaters built to their desires. Rose Theater on Friday was as good as I’ve ever heard it. Every instrument rang warm, clear and true. Alice Tully Hall, in the ’90s, didn’t compare; neither does this work’s 1997 triple-disc recording on Columbia. The performance created the impression, at times, that this theater had been built in a retrospective molding to this band, and perhaps even this piece.

— Ben Ratliff

New York Times

Jazz at Lincoln Center announces 2013 Essentially Ellington Finalists

Who/What/When:

Jazz at Lincoln Center proudly announces the 15 finalist bands that will compete in the prestigious 18th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival (EE) at Frederick P. Rose Hall on May 10 – 12, 2013.

The following finalists are among nearly 100 high school jazz bands across the country that entered the competition. Each school submitted recordings of three tunes performed from charts from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington library.

*American Music Program, Portland, OR
Badger High School, Lake Geneva, WI
Beloit Memorial High School, Beloit, WI
Community Arts Program, Coral Gables, FL
Dillard Center for the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Edmonds-Woodway High School, Edmonds, WA
Foxboro High School, Foxboro, MA
Garfield High School, Seattle, WA
Jazz House Kids, Montclair, NJ
Lexington High School, Lexington, MA
New World School of the Arts, Miami, FL
Rio Americano High School, Sacramento, CA
Roosevelt High School, Seattle, WA
Sun Prairie High School, Sun Prairie, WI
Tucson Jazz Institute, Tucson, AZ*

Beginning on May 10, the 15 bands will compete for top honors and participate in workshops, jam sessions, and more during the three-day EE competition and festival in New York City. The first half of the final concert on May 12 will feature the three top-placing bands performing with a member of the world renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) as guest soloist. The second half will feature the JLCO – whose members serve as mentors for the finalist bands throughout the weekend – performing a repertoire of tunes made famous by Duke Ellington. The festival concludes with an awards ceremony honoring outstanding soloists, sections and the three top-placing bands.

For the first time, the entire weekend of EE events, including the final concert featuring the three top-placing bands and the JLCO, will be webcast live on jalc.org/live.

The Competition & Festival is the culmination of the annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Program (EE), which also includes regional festivals, teaching resources, a summer Band Director Academy, newsletters, and more.

Social Media:

This year, the Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival will be more media-accessible than ever via JALC social media – Facebook at facebook.com/EssentiallyEllington

Twitter EssEllington
Instagram Jalcnyc

Students, viewers, and participators can share their thoughts and photos with us by using the hashtag #EE2013.

Background/Statistics:

Throughout March and April, Jazz at Lincoln Center will send, free of charge, a professional jazz musician to each of the 15 finalist band schools to lead an intensive day-long workshop of rehearsals, lessons, and master classes. The free clinics are part of the rich 18-year history of this unique music education program, which, by the end of this school year, will have reached more than 450,000 students in more than 4,000 high schools across all 50 United States, Canada, and American schools abroad.

The 2012-13 Essentially Ellington repertoire includes, Duke Ellington’s “Blood Count,” “Bonga,” “Echoes of Harlem,” “Lightnin’,” “Royal Garden Blues,” and “Second Line.”

This year, for the first time, band directors have access to free charts and other JALC resources available through instant digital download.

By the end of this year, Jazz at Lincoln Center will have distributed 15,000 newly transcribed scores

JALC has sent over 135,000 free copies of 104 previously unavailable big band scores by Duke Ellington and other seminal composers

252 finalist bands have traveled to New York City to participate in the annual Competition & Festival

This year 2,500 high schools in the United States, Canada, and American schools in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Columbia, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom will receive Essentially Ellington materials.

In the first three months of registration, more than 1,500 band directors have registered their high schools and the program is on track for a record number of registrations.

This year, 96 bands entered the competition by submitting a recorded performance of three compositions.

For more information including background, history, photos, and audio recordings of the Essentially Ellington 2013 repertoire, and more, visit: www.jalc.org/ee

Where:

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th Street, New York, New York.

Tickets:

All ticket sales will be handled via jalc.org or the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office at Broadway and 60th Street inside Time Warner Center. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office is open Monday through Saturday, 10am-6pm, and Sundays, 12pm-6pm. Quantities are limited.

Founding leadership support for Essentially Ellington is provided by The Jack and Susan Rudin Educational and Scholarship Fund.

Major support is provided by

The Con Edison Community Partnership Fund,

Jody and John Arnhold, Alfred and Gail Engelberg,

The Ella Fitzgerald Foundation,

The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation,

The Mericos Foundation, Jennifer and Michael Price,
The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust,

the Vosshall Family and the Augustine Foundation.

JLCO with Wynton Marsalis and guest artists reprise “Blood on the Fieds”

LIVE WEBCAST


The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Pianist Eric Reed and Vocalists Gregory Porter, 
Kenny Washington and Paula West Perform Pulitzer Prize-Winning Work in its Entirety for the First Time Since 1994 Premiere

Who/What:

Jazz at Lincoln Center continues its 25th anniversary celebration with a special performance of Blood On The Fields, Wynton Marsalis’ Pulitzer prize-winning jazz oratorio.  Eighteen years after its premiere at Alice Tully Hall, the jazz oratorio on slavery and freedom will be performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.  Eric Reed, featured pianist on the premiere and original Blood On The Fields recording, joins the JLCO for this special concert event.  Blood on the Fields remains one of Marsalis’ greatest works and reinforces his dictum that “all jazz is modern.“  Rising star baritone Gregory Porter, scat-master Kenny Washington, and the great contralto Paula West reprise the vocal roles. 

    

When:


February 21-23, 2013, 8pm

 

Where:


http://jalc.org/multimedia/webcasts/r...