Wynton Marsalis's Blog, page 82

Wynton On Being Thankful On Thanksgiving

CBS This Morning. On Thanksgiving Eve, Wynton Marsalis takes a look at where we are as a country today, and what we should be grateful for this holiday.

Transcript:

Turkey may be the ceremonial centerpiece but let’s not forget about stuffing, cranberry sauce and all the comfort and dysfunction that family and extended family bring to the table. Thanksgiving: the mythic meal shared by Native Americans with starving Pilgrims became a symbol of giving to others in need, of accepting kindness with gratitude and of recognizing the temperamental authority of Mother Nature through prayer. It was in response to the bloodiest year of the Civil War, that President Lincoln decreed the final Thursday in November to be the holiday we now observe. Through the years this annual celebration of thanking and giving, praying and cooking has become a sacred tradition. The harder the times, the greater the giving, the deeper the thanks.

Today – we are slowly coming together after a contentious election season. Our candidates expended enormous resources in a divisive debate over the national agenda which strained the very fabric of friendships, families, and communities.

In the North East, victims of Superstorm Sandy, some still without homes, face enormous obstacles. Be it earthquakes in the west, tornadoes in the Midwest or hurricanes in the south, Mother Nature will have her way. Btu we are a resourceful and generous nation. We always grow to the size of the challenge. As we invite fellow citizens to a welcome-table in this time need, let us give thanks for what we have and for we what we have in each other.

November MEANS thanksgiving. EVERY November. This tradition lifts us to a year-end holiday season of grand giving and gratitude. But let’s not overlook the personal traditions of everyday that make our world a sweeter place. We must have our Sunday Service. And what about Mama Lucy’s beauty parlor every other Wednesday, or a few colorful words with Cap’n Bob at the newsstand. Let us give thanks for the personal traditions that give our lives texture and quality.

And there is always much to be thankful for. Human kindness is everywhere around us. It is in the night and day work of those who restored power after ‘Sandy,’ It is in the selfless outpouring of financial and medical aid, and it is no less powerfully present in countless thoughts, hopes and well wishes. Let us pray for those in need AND let us also give thanks to our everyday heroes: grandparents who pick up the slack for parents struggling to make ends meet, artists who perform free of charge in schools, hospitals and homes for the elderly, students who mentor and parents who coach…..Volunteers from all across the nation whose outpouring of concern, caring and compassion create a symphony of giving in the spirit of that mythic first thanksgiving feast. This is a time to recognize and give thanks and pray.

Of all the things we will encounter—glorious landscapes, thrilling adventures, or things we may possess— cars, homes…..nothing will be greater or more impactful than another person. It’s thanksgiving, let’s pardon more than the holiday turkey. Let us give, let us forgive, Let us give thanks.

An Unforgettable Evening With Wynton Marsalis, Family And Friends

It was obvious when Mr. Ellis Marsalis took a seat in the center of a sold-out audience last night at Loyola’s Louis J. Roussel Performance Hall that the evening would be a special one. No one could have guessed that the performance by his son, Wynton, would turn into the once-in-a-lifetime event it became.

The younger Marsalis, 51, performing as part of Loyola University’s Presidential Centennial Guest Series, opened the set with his composition “Free to Be.” Accompanying the nine-time Grammy-winning trumpeter and Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center was a world-class ensemble featuring Loyola alum Victor Goines (clarinet and saxophone), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Ali Jackson (drums), and Dan Nimmer (piano), who traded solos to resounding applause. Marsalis was thoughtful and gracious, grabbing a towel at stage left for Jackson, and musing at length on the importance of his upbringing, and the basic values of integrity and equality instilled in him by his father.

Wynton then invited Ellis to join them on the bandstand, to a standing ovation. The New Orleans patriarch guided the ensemble through a liltingly phrased “All of Me,” before Wynton turned pensive once more.

As Wynton went off the planned program to introduce the “New Orleans Function,” discussing the city’s communal approach to music and ability to deal with death because, as he explained (to considerable laughter), “everybody was [buried] above ground,” you could sense something remarkable was afoot. He went on to praise the character and giving spirit of “this man,” still unnamed, whose mother passed away earlier Monday.

The New Orleans matriarch was “Althea Pierce,” Marsalis revealed, to audible gasps; “this man,” her son Wendell.

Marsalis had stepped into an alcove early in the set, while his band played, to warmly embrace a figure in the shadows. Now, to another standing house, said gentleman Pierce joined Marsalis Senior and Junior and co. onstage for “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” which swelled to include other players in the hall invited to pay their musical respects.

Head turned downward, wiping away tears with his white handkerchief after every solo, the visibly moved, grateful Pierce swayed in dirge-like fashion with Marsalis, until the tempo changed.

Pierce looked up and danced, cathartically and to a flood of love back from those around him both onstage and in the crowd. An impromptu second line followed through the venue as concertgoers echoed the jazz funeral exclamation, “Oh, Didn’t He Ramble?!”

At the start of the evening, Loyola Dean of the College of Music and Fine Arts Dr. Donald Boomgaarden recapped a two-hour master class conducted by Marsalis with enthralled students Monday morning, during which “you could hear a pin drop.” He noted that students’ lives were changed, and that regardless of the evening’s program, he considered Marsalis’ visit a success. By the close of the night, audience members of all ages were out of their seats and in the aisles, doubtless a few more lives changed.

Our thoughts are with Pierce and his family, and our gratitude is with both Pierce and Marsalis for sharing such a personal, emotional exchange with the public.

Source: OffBeat

New book: Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

The creators of Jazz ABZ are back for an encore. With infectious rhythm and rhyme, musical master Wynton Marsalis opens kids’ ears to the sounds around us. Their latest children’s book, Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! includes vibrant illustrations by Paul Rogers and 10 three-line verses from Wynton Marsalis about musical and every day sounds. This vivid work is a sonic adventure from cover to cover!

On sale now!

Watch the Wynton Marsalis Quintet LIVE from Doha, Qatar

Tune in today at 2PM & 4PM EDT to see the Wynton Marsalis Quintet perform LIVE from Jazz at Lincoln Center Doha! Live webcasts from Jazz at Lincoln Center DOHA will continue throughout October 5, 6, 8, 2012.

Where to Watch: http://jalc.org/multimedia/webcasts/live-from-doha

COMPLETE WEBCAST SCHEDULE

Thursday, October 5, 2pm& 4pm EST

Wynton Marsalis Quintet

Live from Jazz at Lincoln Center Doha

Click here to tune in

Thursday, October 5, 2pm& 4pm EST

Wynton Marsalis Quintet

Live from Jazz at Lincoln Center Doha

Click here to tune in

Thursday, October 8, 2pm& 4pm EST

Wynton Marsalis Quintet

Live from Jazz at Lincoln Center Doha

Click here to tune in

Forces of Nature: Lightning, Water, Music and Movement

A lighthouse guides a ship to safety. A lightning rod diverts a bolt from a structure by providing a direct path to the ground. Still, the opening images of “Lighthouse/Lightning Rod,” a new work by the choreographer Garth Fagan, with loose, exuberant music by the jazz composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, hint at danger as much as at security.

Dancers, wearing aquatically themed purples and blues, move spontaneously, as if caught in a riptide: with little warning, they change direction, hopping forward on one leg while taking freestyle strokes in the air with a single arm or collapsing and dangling their fingers toward the floor. Without being too heavy-handed, Mr. Fagan shows that the waters surrounding his “Lighthouse,” as the first section is named, are anything but tranquil.

On Thursday evening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the dance was unveiled, along with excerpts from “Griot New York,” Mr. Fagan and Mr. Marsalis’s heralded 1991 collaboration. The California artist Alison Saar designed the set pieces, which include the strangest lighthouse you might ever see: a sculpture of a woman, nearly as tall as the stage, clasping silver branches.

She is both ominous and comforting, as are the blue thorny branches that poke from the wings in the middle section, “Memories.” As the branch structure is pushed closer to center stage, a man’s head, on its side, comes into view. For “Lightning Rod,” the last section, silver lightning bolts hang above the stage. (They’re as obvious as the dancers’ costumes: black unitards with asymmetrical silver ruffles.)

“Memories” leads with a solo for the always debonair Norwood Pennewell, who begins with a simple walk across the stage. Here the music softens to a muted horn and the sound of brushes whisking a drum. Mr. Pennewell, whose mixture of ease and control in adagio dancing is full of heart, lifts a leg to the side and holds it from underneath his thigh — the movement returns in the next section — and, later, erupts in scissor jumps as his arms rise and fall.

A new section shows Natalie Rogers, Nicolette Depass and Vitolio Jeune moving together while lost in their own worlds. Last, a vignette briefly touches upon racism and slavery with a scene involving field workers and a servant’s being carried off against her will. If “Lighthouse” is pleasant enough — though the longer it persists, the more routine it becomes — “Memories” is choppy and within this ever-shifting landscape, the piece drifts.

Mr. Fagan redeems himself in “Lightning Rod,” which is every bit a closer. The dancers meld their bodies to Mr. Marsalis’s score, with heel walks that accent the hips in serpentine shapes, and split jumps, mirroring the music’s swinging exuberance.

Mr. Fagan has his favorite dancers, but I was drawn — here and in “Griot” — to Sade Bully, whose razor-sharp extension and silky gusto takes the awkwardness out of some of Mr. Fagan’s more static poses and unwieldy transitions. He loves a tilt. He loves an impossible balance. He loves a jump that springs from nowhere. Ms. Bully manages all of that with elegance — the blazing sort.

Source: New York Times

Dance Review: Fagan collaboration with Marsalis debuts with fanfare

Garth Fagan and Wynton Marsalis joined forces for their second collaboration, premiering a new work and revitalizing excerpts from a famed repertory piece at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Thursday night to a packed audience that included Brooklyn Nets players and composer Philip Glass.

The concert celebrated a number of milestones: BAM’s 150th anniversary year, its Next Wave Festival’s 30th anniversary and the end of Garth Fagan Dance’s 40th anniverary celebration. The company will bring the concert to Rochester from Nov. 27 to Dec. 2 at Nazareth College Arts Center (although the Wynton Marsalis Septet’s music will be a recording).

The night brought Griot New York, the first work Fagan and Marsalis collaborated on in 1991, and also Lighthouse/Lightning Rod, their new work that allowed the abstract representation of those elements.

Griot is one of Garth Fagan Dance’s most celebrated works for its abstract portrayal of the black experience in New York in the early 1990s. Marsalis’ score swings and wails, staying true to its swing and New Orleans roots in all its originality. Fagan, too, takes cues in his movement from the swing-era. Loose, swinging limbs, cross-body footwork, and even Charleston-style kicks take on new life when combined with Fagan’s gravity-defying poses and sensuously tangled duets.

The company’s longtime members danced with a relaxed precision: Norwood Penewell and Nicolette Depass executed the “Spring Yaounde” duet with breathtaking intimacy. Also standing out was Natalie Rogers, returning to the company this year after directing Fagan’s dance school for many years.

What’s often forgotten in the collective memory of the work is how the stage design and costumes set the moods of intimacy and celebration and boosts Fagan’s choreography.

As Griot New York reflects the early ’90s period in which it was created, Lighthouse/Lightning Rod is fresh and contemporary. Marsalis’ score and Fagan’s choreography were created separately for the new work, coming together during rehearsals in Rochester two weeks ago, so it would be expected that the movement and music wouldn’t always be in exact agreement. And indeed that was true at points, but the dancers were able to find the accents within Marsalis’ bop-inspired score within their patterns because Fagan’s choreography gave them freedom for bodily accentuation.

Source: Democrat and Chronicle

Two Old Friends Prepare a Three-Part Premiere

ROCHESTER — Last week the jazz trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis walked into an office building here that once housed a Knights of Columbus chapter, rode an elevator to a high-ceilinged studio and discovered his septet, a 12-member modern dance company, a giant spatula and a 21-foot-tall woman.

Mr. Marsalis had a cold, but he wasn’t hallucinating. The studio is the home of Garth Fagan Dance, and Mr. Marsalis was there to rehearse. “Lighthouse/Lightning Rod,” his first collaboration with Mr. Fagan since “Griot New York” in 1991, opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Thursday. The spatula was one of Martin Puryear’s set pieces for “Griot,” excerpts from which fill out the program in Brooklyn. The sculpture of the woman was a conception of a lighthouse by the artist Alison Saar.

In front of an enthusiastic audience of patrons and friends at a dress rehearsal later, Mr. Fagan described the three-part premiere: the “Lighthouse” opening and the “Lightning Rod” finale flanking a softer center based on memories that included his favorite part, what he described as “a sophisticated 21st-century ménage à trois.”

After a long day the men sat down to discuss their collaboration. Though Mr. Fagan, 72, and Mr. Marsalis, 50, are peers, there is a lot of father-son in their attitudes toward each other: a mixture of mutual praise, pride, easy humor and a little protectiveness. Here is an edited version of their conversation.

Q. How did you first meet?

GARTH FAGAN I heard Wynton play this amazing concert in Rochester. And then I was driving home and I saw him walking. Someone had left the band and he was upset about it. I know how it is when a dancer you love goes. I took him down to the studio. And my dancers did a command performance for him.

WYNTON MARSALIS I was 22, 23 at that time, and I was serious, but my seriousness was being tested. And he gave me a big boost. Not only him but everything he had created around him. It was moving.

Q. What about it?

MARSALIS Tonight, I was telling the cats in the band, these are people who have been with Garth for a long time. It’s a community. When I was growing up in Louisiana it was segregated, and a janitor made it possible for us to play basketball and football. With Garth tonight, it had that feeling. A community. He made it possible.

Q. The relationship grew?

FAGAN Yes. We catch his band wherever they’re playing. And they come see us. I’ve done other pieces to Wynton’s music since “Griot,” but he hasn’t done a commission for me since then.

Q. How did this one come about?

FAGAN I was bored. I wanted to see what would happen now that we’re both older. For “Griot” I gave him a poem. This time all I gave him was the title. I told him I needed something frisky to start, an adagio middle and a killer end. He gave me exactly that, nine pieces of music, and he said, “Do what you want with them.” I rearranged some, used one section twice. I knew from “Griot” that if something didn’t work, he’d change it on the spot.

Q. Wynton, did you compose with Garth in mind?

MARSALIS He teaches his dancers to listen to the underlying form. So with this piece I tried to make the form more intricate. One piece I made real complicated. I was kind of glad when he told me he didn’t like it, because it’s hard for us to play. But when we got here he said, “I put it in.”

FAGAN I was chicken. But then I thought, “Roll up your sleeves and do it.”

MARSALIS What’s most striking about Garth is how he provides a counterpoint to what we’re doing. And I know he’s going to embrace the 4/4 swing, whereas most dancers are afraid of it. It’s kind of ironic, because it’s the principal of American dance rhythms, but everybody got away from it. It allows you to lay ideas out longwise. I think Garth understands that rhythm better than anybody.

FAGAN I insist that the dancers dance with the music, not to the music. I do that with Brahms, too. That’s my thing.

Q. You said that you’re doing “real jazz dance.” What did you mean?

FAGAN Not the corny, kick-kick sense. It means giving a sense of improvisation. I’ve choreographed for ballet, but in this I don’t want grand ballet preparations. Take risk, with the rhythm especially. Go to that scary place. The jazz people and the real dance people, about 15 to 20 percent of the audience, they’ll get it.

Q. And it’s O.K. for the musicians to improvise?

FAGAN Within a certain form. We know the music, so we don’t get lost if we don’t hear a certain note. And jazz musicians get bored doing the same thing every time.

Q. What do you do when you receive the music?

FAGAN I’ve got to listen to it two million times, till I know it. I choreograph in silence. I give the dancers the movement and see if it holds up. And then I turn on the music and the dancers are so excited to see how it fits.

Q. Wynton, what’s it like to see your music choreographed?

MARSALIS We look at it one time, to see how Garth has laid it out. But he doesn’t want us looking at it too much, which is intelligent. Because we naturally will play something based on what they’re doing, and it’ll be like the counterpoint of a counterpoint. We’ll mess up the syncopation. If we’re looking at the dancers, we’ll start to play with them.

FAGAN Especially jazz musicians and female dancers.

MARSALIS But I have so much confidence in him. For those who have that absolute dedication, you always know the other people who have it. Look at how he is. He’s been working all day and he’s so excited.

FAGAN We know each other. Four members of the band did “Griot.” Both of our groups are like families. The age range of our company is 60 to 19. It’s a community onstage, not six little maids in a row. We have the pluses and the minuses of families.

MARSALIS Us, too.

Source: New York Times

Garth Fagan, Wynton Marsalis pair for new work

About 25 years ago, choreographer Garth Fagan was walking down East Avenue and saw something out of the ordinary. The famous jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis was strolling around, looking rather blue. Marsalis had just performed in Rochester and was having a few band quibbles.

“I picked him up and took him to the studio to see a performance,” says Fagan.

There in a gymnasium where the company practiced, Fagan’s company put on an impromptu private performance for the jazz great. Marsalis, originally from New Orleans and a New York City resident, calls it “a signature moment in my life.”

The meeting of two great artistic minds would eventually lead to one of Fagan’s most significant works, Griot New York, which premiered in 1991 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) with music choreographed and performed by Marsalis, plus quintessential set design by sculptor Martin Puryear.

Playing off 25 years of friendship, Fagan and Marsalis reprise their collaboration this week with the debut of a second joint work, being staged at the Brooklyn venue on Thursday in a gala co-chaired by Marsalis and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns.

Lighthouse/Lightning Rod features original choreography by Tony Award winner Fagan, original music by Grammy Award winner Marsalis (performed with his septet) and original scenery by Guggenheim Fellow artist Alison Saars. It caps Garth Fagan Dance’s 40th anniversary year and also celebrates BAM’s 150th anniversary.

Griot New York will also get a revival at the concert. Observers will then be able to see if 20 years of additional friendship has deepened the artistic connection.

Garth Fagan Dance will perform the new work in Rochester at Nazareth College Arts Center from Nov. 27 to Dec. 2, although it will be with a recording of Marsalis’ music. A group of patrons, friends and family members got to preview the new dance on Friday, as the dance company and Marsalis and his musicians did a full dress rehearsal at Garth Fagan Dance’s Chestnut Street home.

Reguero, a former Democrat and Chronicle critic, is a doctoral student in musicology at State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Source: Democrat & Chronicle

Live webcast: Wynton Marsalis with Bobby McFerrin and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

Two years after his acclaimed debut at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Bobby McFerrin returns to open JALC’s 25th Anniversary Season, performing for the first time with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to watch a live webcast of Bobby McFerrin: My Audio Biography.

Date: September 13, 14 and 15

Time: 8pm (EDT); 7pm (CEST); 6pm (PDT)

Click here to watch the live stream

Wynton’s interview on EBONY - Entertainment and Culture

In 1987, Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Wynton Marsalis directed a summer concert series entitled “Classical Jazz at Lincoln Center” in New York City. That modest series has grown into the impressive, multi-venue performance venue known as Jazz at Lincoln Center: the world’s largest not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to jazz in the world, with year-round concerts, educational events, band competitions, film programs and multimedia broadcasts and webcasts.

As JALC prepares to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary with its season premiere later this month, EBONY talked with Marsalis, who serves as JALC’s Managing and Artistic Director, about the venue’s evolution, his uncompromising devotion to the music and his continuing mission to spread the gospel of jazz…by any digital means necessary.

EBONY: At what point in the beginning did you think that the concept of Jazz at Lincoln Center was going to be a success?

Wynton Marsalis: I think after the concerts we did in 1988, our board was coming into place. We were a department. We were getting critical acclaim. We had an audience base. We had an aesthetic; so very soon, we realized we could do something. When we hired [Founding Executive Director/Producer] Rob Gibson, I thought it would be a success. He brought a lot of energy, enthusiasm and insight with him.

EBONY: Regarding aesthetics, talk about the contributions of writer/authors Albert Murray and Stanley Crouch, the principle intellectuals involved with the formation of JALC.

WM: The conception of quality and performance was something that Crouch had [in mind]; bringing the different generations of musicians together. And Albert Murray laid out the four components of the organization: curatorial, producing concerts, lectures and events; archival, having a record of all the things we do; Educational, teaching about what we do; and ceremonial, giving awards, and doing things like jam sessions, battles of the bands, things that are a part of the ceremonies of the music.

EBONY: JALC weathered charges of cronyism and racism by musicians and the media. What did you learn from that stormy period?

WM: For me, it wasn’t that much of a storm. I was always around controversies since I first came out here. When you create change with your point of view, you have to be ready for what comes with that. And while they were [criticizing], there were also many people supporting and defending us, and putting money into what we were doing, and we were doing our thing: We put on thousands of concerts, hired thousands of musicians, sent out 80,000 Duke Ellington scores. We had 1700 educational events.

EBONY: What have your experiences as an educator taught you about the value of teaching jazz; not only as musical art, but as a twenty-first century, global liberal art that facilitates cooperation and cultural diversity?

WM: Well, you know, you covered it: the music can teach you how to be a better citizen in the world; to be better to yourself, and how to expand your world view, in a world that is expanding all the time…The more expanded your world view is, the more confident you are in your cultural achievements, and in yourself. And the more you know how to approach other people and respect them, the more successful you’ll be living in the modern world. Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.

The lessons of jazz are even more pertinent today, because when it was invented, the art form was so modern: It was talking about a world that would come. And now that we are on the cusp of that world, the music is very timely.

EBONY: Some people are surprised to hear you perform with people like Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, and Eric Clapton. Do your collaborations with them signal an aesthetic change in your views about jazz as a high art? Because people have typecasted you as a rigid, conservative musician, who thinks jazz has nothing to do with pop music…

WM: I don’t mind them typecasting me like that, because I lived in the time of the absolute sellout of jazz to pop music. So I counter stated that consistent lack of integrity in our music. Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives, to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.

That said, there’s a common ground that we musicians share: Paul Simon uses of different types of grooves, and shares a common ground with jazz musicians. The record we did with Eric Clapton [Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues: Live From Jazz at Lincoln Center], that’s more of a jazz record. We’re playing blues. We’re improvising. We’re playing on the same forms that we always played on. Willie Nelson, he’s from Texas…[We’re saying] what if we bring musicians from another art form into the feeling of our art, instead of always us always going into their art?

EBONY: That said, will we ever see you play with young musicians like Robert Glasper?

WM: Oh yeah. Robert Glasper can play! We just played with him at Martha’s Vineyard. I taught a lot of those musicians when they were in high school…And Robert Glasper is not that young [laughs]. He was in high school more than fifteen years ago. Not to make a comment that can be misconstrued as negative about him, because I never talk bad about the musicians that are younger than me. They make the choices that they make to deal with the environment the way they see fit – they’re in a rough environment.

We have personal relationships and we play. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to embrace hip-hop. I will never do that, ever! But does that actually make a difference? They’re not going to stop playing that music because [I don’t play it]. That’s the beauty of democracy [laughs]. They’re going to do their thing, regardless of what anybody else thinks about it – and they should.

EBONY: What are some of the highlights of the upcoming JALC season?

WM: John Lewis, Gerry Mulligan and the Birth of the Cool; a Blue Note Festival, Bird and Diz’s music; a Duke Ellington Festival, John Coltrane, and [Marsalis’ Pulitzer Prize winning Oratorio] Blood on the Fields. We’re opening our season with Bobby McFerrin.

EBONY: When JALC was formed the Internet didn’t exist. How are you going use social media to expose people to jazz?

WM: We’re going to make our content more available. We’re working on those things now. For us, the next five to ten years is dedicated to projecting our mission: in getting on as many screens as we can get on…we can only put out the highest quality we can. That’s what we’re going to do.

source: Ebony.com