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Wynton Marsalis Honored at Marian Anderson 2015 Awards Concert
by Victor L. Schermer
Wynton Marsalis Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Marian Anderson Award Concert Philadelphia, PA November 10, 2015 On this celebratory occasion, Wynton Marsalis became the second bona fide jazz musician (the other being Quincy Jones) to win the prestigious Marian Anderson Award given to “a show business individual who has contributed notably to American cultural, artistic, and/or charitable development." Thus, this year's Award implicitly acknowledged the role of jazz in American life, popular ...
Continue ReadingWynton Marsalis: Driving the Jazz at Lincoln Center Engine
by R.J. DeLuke
Jazz became America's popular music during the big band era, where people with ears for music and feet for dancing heard national bands, regional bands, and local bands. Musicians that became jazz stars attained that status through their individual solo statements in small windows in songs, especially when they were lucky enough to get them on recordings. Those bands never completely disappeared, but in the 1940s the tide turned and jazz musicians relished the freedom accorded them in small groups. ...
Continue ReadingWynton Marsalis: Newark, Delaware, November 2, 2011
by Eugene Holley, Jr.
Wynton Marsalis: The Ballad of the American ArtsBob Carpenter CenterUniversity of DelawareNewark, DelawareNovember 2, 2011 A Wynton Marsalis gig is not particularly news. But his appearance at the Bob Carpenter Center was truly newsworthy, as evidenced by the appreciative, near-capacity crowd who came out to hear his stirring fifty-minute lecture/performance. “The Ballad of the American Arts" was his intimate, yet intense presentation that encompassed arts advocacy and education, plus American political, social, ...
Continue ReadingWynton Marsalis' Swinging Into The 21st Redux
by C. Michael Bailey
Sony Legacy has re-issued trumpeter Wynton Marsalis' monumental recorded conclusion to the 20th century, Swinging Into The 21st. Originally comprised of nine albums released between June 1999 and August 2000, Swinging Into The 21st was Marsalis' effort to cap two decades of recording with CBS/Sony. The music was impressive in its variety and creative density. For this reissue, Marsalis' jazz cantata All Rise (Sony, 2002) is included. Composed and premiered during the period of Swinging Into The 21st, ...
Continue ReadingWynton Marsalis: All Rise
by C. Michael Bailey
Originally released in 2002 as a stand-alone offering, Wynton Marsalis' sacred composition All Rise will enjoy a reprising as part of Legacy Records re-issuing of Marsalis' landmark collection, Swingin' Into The 21st. A devotee of Duke Ellington, Marsalis expands on themes and methods that Ellington himself investigated in his Sacred Concerts of 1965, 1968, and 1973 (RCA, Prestige, RCA, respectively). All Rise was originally commissioned by maestro Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic as the last of ...
Continue ReadingWillie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis, featuring Norah Jones: Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles
by C. Michael Bailey
After the success of Two Men With the Blues (Blue Note, 2008), Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles is a welcome inevitability. The addition of the like-minded Norah Jones to the mix is just gravy, properly augmenting a Ray Charles tribute. With the possible exception of Van Morrison, only Willie Nelson exists as the logical heir to Charles' mantle. Like Charles, Nelson's aptitude has been promiscuous, gobbling up and transforming genres previously not ...
Continue ReadingWynton Marsalis: Cambridge, MA, April 28, 2011
by Andrew J. Sammut
Wynton MarsalisHarvard Sanders TheatreCambridge, MA April 28, 2011 A capacity crowd filled Harvard University's Sanders Theatre for “Music as Metaphor," featuring trumpeter, composer and Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center Wynton Marsalis. Thursday night's event launched a two-year series of programs by Marsalis at Harvard entitled “Hidden in Plain View: Meanings in American Music," organized by university President Drew Faust as part of an expansion of the arts at the nation's oldest institution ...
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