FORT WORTH - What a difference eight years make. When Wynton Marsalis played Bass Performance Hall in 2000 with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, he treated jazz as a museum object - something to be revered but not touched.
But a far more daring Mr. Marsalis played Bass Hall on Monday night. Three songs into his show with the JLCO and he was diving into the off-kilter funk of “Abyssinian 200," a new composition that flirted with the avant-garde.
Two songs later, the 15-man group got positively surreal with “Portrait in Seven Shades: Dali," which was written by band member Ted Nash. With trumpets speeding up and slowing down seemingly at random, it sounded like “Flight of the Bumblebee" after two bottles of cough syrup. For the Picasso segment of “Portrait," Mr. Marsalis tapped the spirit of John Coltrane with a long, frantic trumpet solo that turned the song into a bolero gone wild.
What, exactly, has gotten into Mr. Marsalis? It's hard to say, although it's possible he simply got sick of being criticized year after year for being too conservative.
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