Jazz Articles

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra: Harriet Tubman

by Budd Kopman
August 19, 2008

Bassist, librettist, composer, and conductor Marcus Shelby has created with the jazz oratorio and double CD Harriet Tubman, a work that ought to have a place of honor in the intersecting worlds of jazz and American Black history. Performed exquisitely by the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, with vocals mostly by Faye Carol as Harriet Tubman, but also by drummer Kenny Washington, Jeannine Anderson, and Joseph Mace, Tubman's story is brought to life in music and words. Basing ...

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra: Harriet Tubman

by Michael P. Gladstone
July 26, 2008

Harriet Tubman is an ambitious jazz opera, largely composed and arranged by bassist Marcus Shelby for his Jazz Orchestra. Shelby was a member of Black/Note, an ensemble that recorded for Blue Note and Impulse! during the first half of the 1990s.

The biographical heroine of this effort is the 18th-century woman who rose from slavery to become a freedom fighter, and later, a civil rights activist. Tubman has been universally recognized as one of the most inspirational African-Americans. Marcus Shelby, ...

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra featuring Faye Carol: Harriet Tubman

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
June 16, 2008

Bay Area bassist and orchestra leader Marcus Shelby conducts his jazz oratorio based on the life of legendary Underground Railroad heroine, Harriet Tubman. Her story doesn't lack for pathos or drama--either in its broad outline or in the smaller details. For example, while she was a teenaged slave, an overseer threw an iron weight at her head, nearly killing her and rendering her subject to seizures for the rest of her life.As much as the recording might evoke ...

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra: Port Chicago

by Jack Bowers
May 1, 2006

Are you aware of Port Chicago, and do you know what happened there more than sixty years ago? Chances are you don't, as it's not something American history books will likely mention or military recruiters point to with pride. In brief: on July 17, 1944, a massive explosion at the Port Chicago Naval Base (near Oakland, California) killed more than 320 men, most of them African-American sailors, and injured some 400 others, by far the worst disaster on US soil ...

The Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra: The Lights Suite

by Jack Bowers
February 1, 2002

A brief preamble: while spending last Thanksgiving with my wife's sister and her family in Palo Alto, CA, I had the radio tuned to KCSM-FM in San Mateo (a 24-hour Jazz station, naturally) whose weekday noontime feature is an album played in its entirety without interruption. On this particular day the album chosen was by a group I'd not heard before, the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra. After listening for a few moments I thought to myself, “I've gotta get a ...

The Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra: The Lights Suite

by Jack Bowers
February 1, 2002

A brief preamble: while spending last Thanksgiving with my wife’s sister and her family in Palo Alto, CA, I had the radio tuned to KCSM­FM in San Mateo (a 24­hour Jazz station, naturally) whose weekday noontime feature is an album played in its entirety without interruption. On this particular day the album chosen was by a group I’d not heard before, the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra. After listening for a few moments I thought to myself, “I’ve gotta get a ...