Jazz Articles about Ellis Marsalis
Goodbye, Ellis Marsalis, Jazz Father
by Douglas Groothuis
The COVID-19 Reaper has claimed another senior statesman of pianist and educator, Ellis Marsalis, who left us on April 1. He was 85 and died in his home city of jny: New Orleans, which has recently ignited as a hot spot for the menace virus. We will likely lose many senior jazz performers in the coming weeks and months. As the Hebrew Psalmist wrote of God and death. You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, ...
read moreEllis Marsalis: New York City, NY, November 9, 2012
by Nick Catalano
Although pianist Ellis Marsalis has garnered countless plaudits for his teaching at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and as chair of the Jazz Studies department at the University of New Orleans he rarely gets critical notice in these parts for his pianism. For decades, he has shaped the lives of countless jazz musicians including trumpeters Terence Blanchard and Nicholas Payton, pianist singer Harry Connick Jr., and his own four musical sons. During his career, the 78 year-old pianist's ...
read moreEllis Marsalis: A New Orleans Christmas Carol
by Dan Bilawsky
Christmas music doesn't usually come into stores, radios and homes until Thanksgiving time but, in a year when snow covered the East Coast before Halloween, early arrivals seem to be the norm. Guitarist Doug Munro delivered a Django Reinhardt-styled set of holiday classics on A Very Gypsy Christmas (GotMusic, 2011) in September; pianist Geri Allen tackled songs of the season on A Child Is Born, which hit stores around Columbus Day; and now, 2011 NEA Jazz Master Ellis Marsalis joins ...
read moreEllis Marsalis: An Open Letter to Thelonious
by Michael P. Gladstone
Pianist Ellis Marsalis' An Open Letter to Thelonious is more than just another homage to the mystique and magic of Thelonious Monk's music.
Marsalis is no stranger to the Monk's music, but it is hardly an area of specialty for the patriarch pianist. As a native of New Orleans, he went against stereotype by not specializing in either trad jazz or R&B. Beginning in the late '50s, he played with mainstream players like Ed Blackwell, Cannonball and Nat ...
read moreEllis Marsalis Quartet: An Open Letter to Thelonious
by Woodrow Wilkins
To many, he is the patriarch of America's most celebrated jazz family. But to those who've heard him play, he's a talent not to be overlooked. Ellis Marsalis is one of the most respected among the New Orleans-based jazz artists. A former Marine, he played the circuit in New Orleans before hooking up with Ornette Coleman. Over the years, Marsalis built an extensive resume as musician, professor of music and, of course, father to Wynton, Branford, Ellis III, ...
read moreThe Ellis Marsalis Quartet: An Open Letter to Thelonious
by C. Michael Bailey
Thelonious Monk is jazz's biggest enigma. Called the “high priest of bebop," the jazz Monk composed and performed was anything but. Technically, Monk's time and tempo were impressive, but he was no dazzling speed wizard like Bud Powell or arpeggio painter like Art Tatum. He didn't compose bebop, but bebop leaders recorded his compositions. What Monk was...was Monk. He was the singular jazz spirit that makes jazz jazz and his songbook the richest in the music.
Monk's compositions, ...
read moreEllis Marsalis: Ruminations in New York
by Robert R. Calder
This nice, rather than exciting, solo piano set pays tribute, consciously or not, to the late John Lewis's last campaign: on behalf of the Great American Songbook ballads which Lewis insisted were, with the blues, the foundation of jazz since the 1920s. Inspired no doubt by years creating his own melodic lines on Kern, Arlen & Co's tunes, Marsalis here produces several of his own on the old template, doing some classic things with them.His opener ...
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