Music review: Wynton Marsalis with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

Image via WikipediaMusic review: Wynton Marsalis with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

Wynton Marsalis thinks big — and he has the talent, drive and clout to carry out his ambitions. Hence “Swing Symphony” (Symphony No. 3), his latest omnivorous attempt to merge the history of acoustic jazz with a symphony orchestra.

First heard in Berlin, then in the New York Philharmonic’s season-opener in September, “Swing Symphony” reached Los Angeles on Saturday night as Walt Disney Concert Hall’s stage groaned under the combined weight of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Los Angeles received a bonus: The piece’s fifth movement, which was deleted from the New York performance due to TV time limits, was played here, making this the U.S. premiere of the complete work.

From a jazz point of view, Marsalis’ new work can be heard as a homage to his idol Duke Ellington’s “Black, Brown and Beige” — sometimes rather explicitly in sound. Yet Marsalis is also applying Mahler’s vision of what a symphony should be: an embracing of the world.

Like Marsalis’ “All Rise,” which the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Jazz at Lincoln Center big band performed and recorded in 2001, “Swing Symphony” is more of a suite than a symphony, in which a plethora of idioms jump-cuts wildly from one to the next. Marsalis arranges his six-movement, 51-minute cross-section of jazz history more or less chronologically, from ragtime to the Charleston, the big band era, bebop, Afro-Cubop and John Coltrane’s modal period (the fifth movement) before doubling back to a ballad for Ellingtonian saxophones. Clearly any developments beyond 1961 — the year of Wynton’s birth — remains out-of-bounds on the Marsalis jazz timeline.

Luckily, the piece has an irresistible vitality over its long span, and Marsalis does get the symphony orchestra thoroughly involved. Encouraged by jazz-attuned conductor Leonard Slatkin, the Phil could swing harder than its New York colleagues at times, and there were plenty of scorching solos from the Jazz at Lincoln Center band — including Marsalis himself, seated as always in his trumpet section. But there are many portions — the second movement in particular — in which there is just too much busywork, enough to keep this huge apparatus from fusing, lifting off and finding its groove.

In programming Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” — and what a delight it was to hear it indoors, for a change, instead of through outdoor amplification — Slatkin not only suavely illustrated the lineage of classical-jazz fusion, he let Gershwin make points of the virtues of self-editing, segueing, not overloading the texture, and, of course, one great tune after another. Shostakovich’s spiffy little Jazz Suite No. 1, with its Weill-like marches and impish humor, showed that the Jazz Age spread as far as Russia.

The audience responded wildly; only Gustavo Dudamel gets as big a hand at L.A. Philharmonic concerts as Marsalis got. As an encore, Marsalis launched an eloquently subtle blues jam, in which every member of his big band took a chorus.

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VOA | Remembering Jazz 'Ambassador' Dr. Billy Taylor | USA | English

VOA | Remembering Jazz 'Ambassador' Dr. Billy Taylor | USA | English

Jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and educator Dr. Billy Taylor died of heart failure December 28 in New York City. He was 89. Dr. Taylor was also an author, lecturer, radio and television commentator, and an international ambassador of jazz.


When he wasn't presenting lectures or producing jazz programs on network television, Billy Taylor spent his free time composing and performing jazz. He appeared on more than 40 recordings, mostly with trios and quartets. He was 67 years old when he released his first album on his own label, Taylor-Made. 

Billy Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina on July 21, 1921. He began taking piano lessons from one of his uncles at age seven. Two of his greatest influences were jazz pianists Fats Waller and Art Tatum. But, Taylor once said it was a little-known musician who had the most impact on his music.

AP

Duke Ellington, left, and jazz pianist Billy Taylor shake hands on New York's Jazzmobile during a visit by the Ellington Band to the city's Harlem section in the early 1970s

"There was a man named Henry Grant, who was a confidante of Duke Ellington, who was a wonderful pianist and composer who opened the door for me, in terms of understanding the similarities between the impressionistic school of music and some of the things that Duke Ellington and other jazz musicians were doing," Taylor said.

Billy Taylor earned a degree in music from Virginia State College in 1942. Two years later, he moved to New York City and landed a job with the house band at the famed Birdland nightclub. He played piano there until 1951 when he formed the Billy Taylor Trio. Members of his trio included bassists Charles Mingus and Oscar Pettiford, as well as drummer Billy Cobham. In 1969, he became the first African American band director for a network television series, "The David Frost Show."

In addition to his work as a composer and performer, Billy Taylor was one of jazz's most dedicated supporters. He founded Jazzmobile, an organization that produces inner-city jazz concerts. He also hosted a weekly jazz program on public radio called "Jazz Alive"; he produced stories on jazz for the television magazine news show "CBS Sunday Morning"; and he was the Artistic Advisor for Jazz at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Taylor explained that his love for jazz came from his expertise on the piano and from performing.

"Everything that I've done stems from those two things; the fact that I love to play the piano and I love to perform for people," he said. "I also like to write music which other people play."

Billy Taylor received "Down Beat" magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was inducted into the International Association of Jazz Educator's Hall of Fame. He won a Grammy Award, two Peabody Awards, and an Emmy Award for his "CBS Sunday Morning" segment on Quincy Jones. In 1996, he performed in an all-star jazz tribute to his close friend, VOA jazz host Willis Conover.

AP

FILE - In this Nov. 5, 2007 file photo, musician Billy Taylor arrives for the 2007 Library Lions Benefit at the New York Public Library

Billy's gift for teaching earned him a Doctorate in Music Education from the University of Massachusetts. Until his death, he was a visiting professor at numerous American universities. He took an active interest in teaching jazz to younger students. He once remarked that today's school children have fewer opportunities to learn music in the classroom.

They don't get an opportunity to have access to musical instruments as I did when I was in public school," he said. "They don't have enough music teachers because most communities don't realize that the aesthetic part of the human being, the ability to express oneself through the arts is a very important part of growing up."

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Pianist Randy Weston Pays Homage to Africa - The Local – Fort-Greene Blog - NYTimes.com

Image by El Humilde Fotero del Pánico via FlickrPianist Randy Weston Pays Homage to Africa - The Local – Fort-Greene Blog - NYTimes.com

When it comes to the work of Brooklyn-born jazz pianist and composer Randy Weston, the discussion is naturally about Africa, a continent that he has a long association with over a career of more than six decades.

In his travels dating back to the early 1960s, the musician has visited 18 African nations and lived in Morocco, where he founded a jazz club in Tangier.

“Africa is important because all of humanity began there,” Mr. Weston, 84, said in a recent phone interview. “This is the beginning of all of us. I don’t care where you are on the planet earth, we all got African blood — all of us.”

Mr. Weston, a Clinton Hill resident for nearly 50 years, recounts his musical explorations and travels in his recently-published memoir, “African Rhythms,” co-written with Willard Jenkins. Simultaneously, Mr. Weston has released a live album, “The Storyteller,” recorded with his African Rhythms Sextet at New York’s Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola last year.

“I thought it was necessary to document our history because African people, Africa and even African-American traditions are disappearing,” he said. “How can young people know what happened before? I was lucky to live in Africa and hang out with traditional people and just speak about what music can do and the places that it can take you, how it’s a spiritual force.”

Mr. Weston grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant with a father who instilled a sense of African pride, and he recalled his encounters, as a young person, with Brooklyn’s jazz musicians and other artists.

“You had the black church, the blues, the comedians, the painters, the sculptors, the dancers — it was everything,” he explained. “You can go to the cinema and see a [short film] on Cab Calloway or Duke Ellington… Plus the musicians’ homes were always open, whether it was Max Roach, Ray Abrams, Duke Jordan or Cecil Payne. You just ring the bell and walk in. That’s how spiritual it was.”

Carol Friedman

In the book, Mr. Weston writes about one of his major influences, the legendary jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, whom he first saw play with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins on Manhattan’s 52nd Street. At first, Mr. Weston wasn’t impressed by Monk’s music, he said, but he later became an admirer.

“I heard the magic of Africa in his music,” Mr. Weston said. “I heard the sounds of ancient African civilization in my imagination when I heard his music — all the complex harmonies and melodies. There was a kind of magic that he puts into the piano.”

After returning to Brooklyn from serving in World War II, Mr. Weston saw that heroin was ravaging the community. To escape from that, he found work in the Berkshires, where he further developed as a musician. In 1954 he recorded his first album, “Cole Porter in a Modern Mood.”

Six years later, he recorded the album “Uhuru Afrika,” a four-song suite featuring musicians from Africa and Cuba as well as American jazz players. That same year, 17 African countries achieved their independence. Mr. Weston writes in his book that “Uhuru Afrika” was intended to show that “the African people are a global people.”

Last month, Mr. Weston performed “Uhuru Afrika” at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center to honor the work’s 50th anniversary.

“We realized that we all had the same foundation our ancestors passed [on], whether it’s the black church or the blues or whatever,” he said. “So I wanted this work of music to describe that, and at the same time to welcome the new nations of Africa.”

In 1961 Mr. Weston embarked on his first visit to Africa as part of a cultural exchange program with other musicians. He still remembers the feeling when the plane first landed in Nigeria, he said.

“My ancestors were taken from Africa in boats and chains,” he said. “Me — I’m on a plane coming back to Africa. When we arrived at 11 o’clock at night, and the plane door opened, we heard these drummers. We’re home. Our ancestral home. It was a very powerful and spiritual experience.”

Mr. Weston then settled in Morocco for a couple of years, where he became immersed with the music and culture of the Gnawa people. As a tribute to them, he wrote the composition “Blue Moses,” inspired by a Gnawa song. However, Mr. Weston writes in the book, he couldn’t perform “Blue Moses” in public because the Gnawa chief considered the song sacred. A year later, the chief changed his mind after some persuasion by the pianist.

“People in the world need to hear this music,” said Mr. Weston. But, he added, “If he had told me not to play that song, I would have not played it and left it alone. I have so much respect for those people.”

In the last five years, Mr. Weston has performed in Japan, Russia, Rwanda and Panama, where his father is from. He hopes to visit Africa again.

“When I travel to other countries,” he said, “I’m always amazed at how music does what it does. We play the music, but when it goes out, we don’t know what happens. We’re like the postmen: we deliver the mail, but we don’t know what’s inside the mail. Each person in that audience is on a separate trip. What a gift from the Creator.”

Randy Weston will take part in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Listening Party event on Dec. 7 at 7 p.m.; free admission. Mr. Weston will also perform at the Brooklyn Museum on Dec. 12, from 3-5 p.m.; $15. For more information on Randy Weston, visit http://www.randyweston.info.

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Master Yusef Lateef surrounds Grace Cathedral audience with world-spanning jazz - San Jose Mercury News

Image via WikipediaMaster Yusef Lateef surrounds Grace Cathedral audience with world-spanning jazz - San Jose Mercury News

Ninety years old this month, Yusef Lateef was greeted with reverent applause Friday at Grace Cathedral, where close to a full house awaited this master of jazz and world-spanning sounds. As the applause echoed through the cathedral, Lateef began to play, while strolling around the nave, encircling the audience with music, which floated up and through the void.

Pretty soon, the place was exceptionally quiet, except for the very quiet music: Lateef playing a small flute, something like a penny whistle, and Adam Rudolph, his percussionist, playing another flute and making soft whooshes with a length of plastic tubing, which he whirled while walking. They were populating the big sacred space with natural sounds: breath and wind, moans and night sounds, as if desert crickets were speaking through the flutes.

Going back to Duke Ellington's famous sacred concert with his orchestra at Grace in 1965, the cathedral atop Nob Hill has hosted much spiritualized jazz. Since the 1980s, SFJAZZ -- which presented Lateef as part of the ongoing San Francisco Jazz Festival -- has brought many preeminent instrumentalists to Grace for solo or duo concerts. Headliners have ranged from Anthony Braxton to Pharoah Sanders and Joshua Redman.

So it was only a matter of time before Lateef appeared at the cathedral. Along with John Coltrane, Don Cherry (who played at Grace some two decades ago) and a few others, he is a progenitor of jazz as a sacred language, expanding

to embrace the folk and sacred musical traditions of the world. Even before the release of his popular "Eastern Sounds" LP in 1961, Lateef was laying claim to this territory, and, Friday at Grace, he filled the Episcopalian cathedral with Eastern sounds and more.

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MARSALIS SWING SYMPHONY RECEIVES U.S. DEBUT WITH NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

MARSALIS SWING SYMPHONY RECEIVES U.S. DEBUT WITH NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

By Culturekiosque Staff

NEW YORK, 23 SEPTEMBER 2010 — Wynton Marsalis’ Symphony No. 3, titled Swing Symphony, recieved its U.S. debut last night as part of the gala opening of the 2010 - 2011 season of the New York Philharmonic and its 36-year-old music director, Alan Gilbert. Commissioned jointly by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and London’s Barbican Center this composition is Mr. Marsalis’s third symphonic work. With this piece, the American jazz artist and composer's intention was no less than to trace the long and rich history of jazz.

Given its world premiere last June by the Berlin Philharmonic together with Mr. Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, the Swing Symphony is a stylish work full of American vigour, hair-raising virtuosity and a conservative, New Orleans aesthetic charm. Blues, New Orleans parade marches, Hollywood film music, the Hot Club de France and Latin Jazz are among the styles evoked in the six-movement work. And while some may not agree with Mr. Marsalis' vision of the history of jazz, he nonetheless pays tribute to the many great American jazz artists and composers, most notably Duke Ellington, who came before him.

Particularly sexy was the acoustical effect of Mr. Marsalis and his superb 15-piece multi-ethnic jazz orchestra tucked neatly in the gut of the 85-member New York Philharmonic, who acquitted themselves honestly and with enthusiasm, although there were moments when one could hear that Mr. Marsalis' ambitious score obliged them to defend their classical pedigree in unexpected ways.

Similarly, Mr. Marsalis' score makes it patently clear that to be a member of the Jazz Orchestra of Lincoln Center requires not only the same level of virtuosity and artistic talent as their classical colleagues, but in addition, demands a consumate mastery of improvisational jazz performance practice from its early days in New Orleans to the latest global avant-garde. Never an easy task for either musical genre given the history of racial segregation in both classical music and jazz in America. Astutely, Mr. Marsalis has written a work that requires the collaboration of the finest of both worlds in order to be realized. This bodes well for Mr. Marsalis' ensemble, as well as for future musicians and composers with a love of both art forms.

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Marsalis, lending sound to a silent | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/29/2010

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeMarsalis, lending sound to a silent | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/29/2010

On Tuesday, the Keswick Theatre in Glenside hosts an event that, at first glance, might seem like a mismatch, even bizarre.

Jazz trumpet master Wynton Marsalis and a 10-piece ensemble will be accompanying - a silent film.

Yet that silent film is new, not old, and so are events like this, at which musical masters play live to accompany silent movies.

The film in question is Louis, directed by Dan Pritzker and shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind). It's less of a biopic than a riff on the life of Louis Armstrong.

Marsalis' group, featuring Victor Goines, Ted Nash, and other stalwarts of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, will play original pieces along with classic works by Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington. Philadelphia is the last stop on a tour that includes Chicago, Detroit, Washington, and New York's Apollo Theater.

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Duke Ellington: His Life Story, Part Two | Special English | Learning English The Voice Of America

Duke Ellington: His Life Story, Part Two | Special English | Learning English

Click this link to listen to or download the audio file

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First Listen: The Marsalis Family, 'Music Redeems' : NPR

First Listen: The Marsalis Family, 'Music Redeems' : NPR

Today's first family of jazz, the Marsalises don't often get together, at least on stage. But when the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival in Washington, D.C. (now the DC Jazz Festival), gave its 2009 lifetime achievement award to family father Ellis Marsalis — a great pianist and legendary educator — all four of his music-playing sons (Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason) joined him on stage. Ellis Marsalis III also recited an original poem for his father, frequent collaborators Herlin Riley and Eric Revis stepped in, Dr. Billy Taylor joined in the fun, and family friend Harry Connick Jr. took a few guest spots, too.

Marsalis Music, the record label founded by Branford, recorded the show. Now, it's releasing part of the concert as Music Redeems. But this isn't a money grab: All proceeds from sales are going to the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, the practice, teaching, recording and performing space currently under construction as the heart of the New Orleans Habitat Musicians' Village. (Following Hurricane Katrina, Connick and Branford Marsalis initiated the construction of a community for New Orleans musicians, many of whom lived in substandard housing even before Katrina.)

The music captured here feels casual in the best way. There's the deft reading of "Donna Lee," with a muted Wynton bebop-soloing away and Jason whistling the rapid-fire melody. Or the joyous back-and-forth New Orleans feel of "At the House in Da Pocket" and "The 2nd Line," the blues tunes which close out the album. Or Ellis Marsalis' solo piece "After," or his duet with Harry Connick Jr. on "Sweet Georgia Brown," or the charming story Connick tells about taking piano lessons in the Marsalis household as a child. It's as if the family and friends were gathering for a jam session on stage, and amazing each other at every turn.

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