Jazz Articles about Wynton Marsalis

Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra: A Love Supreme

by C. Michael Bailey
January 4, 2005

The Marsalis brothers are going to single-handedly turn John Coltrane's crowning achievement into a jazz standard. Branford Marsalis recently released a DVD/CD set of his quartet's performance of the jazz suite, recorded live in Amsterdam at Bimhuis Jazz Club. Now younger brother Wynton has provided the suite with a new spin, a big band treatment arranged by Marsalis for his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. The suite opens with the familiar four bass notes that are followed by a ...

Wynton Marsalis: Unforgivable Blackness

by Jim Santella
December 6, 2004

The story of Jack Johnson deserves to be accompanied by music that is majestic, bold, daring, and passionate. The boxer, whose fate has been depicted in a new film by Ken Burns, led a life that was filled with happiness, success, romance, tragedy, and misery.

Wynton Marsalis' music for The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson parallels the fate of America's first Black Heavyweight Champion of the World. From sprightly entertaining to dramatic and intense, his score follows ...

Bill Clinton and Wynton Marsalis: The 2004 Election Blues Session

by Mark F. Turner
April 1, 2004

Politicians and jazz make strange bedfellows

With this being a Presidential election year the focus will definitely be on the economy, homeland security, and a host of other issues. Candidates and their respective parties are already on the road to a very nasty and heated election. While the press delights in negative campaigns, profile attacks, and global unease, there’s a secret in Washington that may never make headlines with the new recording, The 2004 Election Blues Session.

In the first ...

Wynton Marsalis: The Magic Hour

by Franz A. Matzner
March 2, 2004

Those with an interest in polemics will interpret the title of the first tune on The Magic Hour, “Feeling of Jazz," to be another example in Wynton Marsalis' campaign to define just what is and is not jazz. Given that the lyrics performed by Dianne Reeves read like a dictionary entry for jazz circa 1935 (or earlier), it's difficult to ignore the possibility. Even so, polemics are generally an obstacle to musical enjoyment, and no matter which side of the ...

Wynton Marsalis Speaks Out

by Franz A. Matzner
February 27, 2004

Trumpeter, composer, educator--Wynton Marsalis requires no introduction. Since beginning his career, he has received an almost endless stream of accolades, his share of criticisms, and an ever-growing level of recognition from within and without the jazz community. The first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, Mr. Marsalis has also garnered eight Grammy awards, France's Grand Prix du Disque, the Edison Award of the Netherlands, and he has been elected an honorary member of England's ...

Ted Nash: Still Evolved

by Jim Santella
December 3, 2003

Ted Nash's work with Lionel Hampton, Quincy Jones, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Don Ellis, the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, the Herbie Nichols Project and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra has earned the saxophonist a reputation for living in the mainstream. At 43, he’s in a position to continue shaping the landscape of straight-ahead jazz through his innovative ideas.

The title of Still Evolved refers to the growth we’ve witnessed in the modern mainstream during the jazz resurgence of the ...

Ted Nash: Still Evolved

by C. Michael Bailey
October 9, 2003

Still Evolved can be heard as an accidental suite, a collection of compositions that hang together independent of design. Ted Nash is most recently holding down a tenor chair in the Kennedy Center Jazz Orchestra. Here he turns his attention to small group performance and composition... with a hurricane-like creative force. Mr. Nash has composed eight pieces for the standard trumpet-tenor quintet. And the music is a fresh as strawberries bursting on the roof of your mouth.

Besides ...