Articles

Delfeayo Marsalis Uptown Jazz Orchestra: Jazz Party

by Jerome Wilson
May 17, 2020

This album was recorded in 2019 but its message of unabashed joy is welcome these days for obvious reasons. The people responsible for it are Delfeayo Marsalis and Uptown Jazz Orchestra. The music is steeped in the various musical traditions of Marsalis' native New Orleans but brings in a few outside influences to enhance the fun. All sorts of Big Easy sounds are touched on here. “Blackbird Special," a tune originally by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, intensifies ...

Delfeayo Marsalis: Kalamazoo

by Dan Bilawsky
November 2, 2017

How is it that we haven't been gifted a live album from trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis before? He's been such an important part of the fabric of this music, whether producing works of lasting significance for other jazz greats in the studio, sharing space with his famous family, or leading his Uptown Orchestra through a rousing set in the Crescent City, yet there's nothing in his leader discography to highlight what it's truly like to hear one of his shows in ...

In Jazz We Trust: On The Politically Inspired Work Of Delfeayo Marsalis and Ted Nash

by Dan Bilawsky
October 2, 2016

The current state of American politics--a veritable cesspool that makes reality television seem sane by comparison--leaves little to feel good about. Moral compasses are skewed, elected officials bicker like fractious toddlers, and candidates ranging from the lunatic sybarite variety to the bumptiously insincere seek the highest office in the land with strong approval from the loud and entrenched in opposing corners. It's enough to make you cry, sigh, and check out completely. But before you withdraw from any discussion of ...

Delfeayo Marsalis: Sweet Thunder

by Raul d'Gama Rose
April 11, 2011

Was Delfeayo Marsalis undertaking a task too challenging when he recorded music from one of Duke Ellington's most beloved albums to make Sweet Thunder? Gunther Schuller offers a doctrine that seems to suggest this has been so. Apparently the size and composition of the ensemble lead to this mishap. Would it have been remiss, to replicate the tonal colors that Ellington brought forth when he recorded Such Sweet Thunder (Columbia, 1957)--his jazz musical interpretation/relocation of the iambic pentameter of William ...

Delfeayo Marsalis: Sweet Thunder

by Edward Blanco
January 14, 2011

Acclaimed trombonist and member of the first family of jazz, Delfeayo Marsalis launches Sweet Thunder: Duke & Shak, an original theatrical jazz production culled from live performances in thirty-six locations across the country. The play was born from Marsalis' affinity for the music of Duke Ellington and the poetry of Shakespeare: first brought to the musical stage in the 1957 production of Such Sweet Thunder at the Shakespeare Festival I Stratford, Canada. Both Ellington and Billy Strayhorn were invited to ...

Delfeayo Marsalis Live at The Blue Note

by Ernest Barteldes
March 31, 2007

Delfeayo Marsalis Quintet The Blue Note New York City, New York January 4, 2007

Tony Bennett quotes Duke Ellington telling him to “sing sweet and put a little dirt in," and that is the best way to describe Delfeayo (pronounced Del- FEE -yo) Marsalis' Quintet set at New York's Blue Note Jazz Club on January 4, which was part of his week-long residence there.

Delfeayo Marsalis: Minions Dominion

by Joel Roberts
February 23, 2007

Delfeayo Marsalis, one of the less famous members of the most famous family in jazz today, has made his name mostly behind the scenes as a Grammy-winning producer of more than 75 albums for, among others, older brothers Wynton and Branford, Harry Connick, Jr., Marcus Roberts, and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. But he is also among the more commanding trombonists of his generation and a composer of far-reaching ambition, although he's recorded surprisingly little as a leader. Minions Dominion, ...