Grammy and Pulitzer winner Wynton Marsalis sits in at Springbrook
by Danny Jacobs | Gazette.net Staff Writer
Wynton Marsalis’ appearance Friday with Springbrook High School’s jazz band was like a great jazz song: a catchy beat with plenty of improvisation and multiple solos that left the audience standing and applauding.
For 90 minutes, Marsalis, a Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning classical and jazz trumpet player, taught the students on stage and entertained the 100 people in the audience, including band members from Springbrook and Briggs Chaney and White Oak middle schools.
Marsalis has held similar sessions with students across the country, and was at Springbrook in part because of Chad Arrendell, a senior trumpet player in the jazz band whose father is Marsalis’ manager. (Ironically, Arrendell was on a college visit Friday and not in school.)
Marsalis’ overarching message was simple. ‘‘Ultimately, it’s not just about the music. [Music] can help you understand life,” he said shortly after walking on stage in a gray suit, blue shirt and pale orange tie, blowing into his trumpet mouthpiece to warm it up.
The 20-plus-piece jazz band, having itself warmed up before Marsalis arrived, began playing ‘‘It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” one of three songs it played two weeks earlier on its way to second place at a national music festival in Anaheim, Calif. Marsalis walked around the stage looking over students’ shoulders and listening intently as band director Wyman Jones conducted.
Once the music stopped, Marsalis complimented the band and began critiquing ‘‘with love,” as he put it. He first asked who had ever heard Duke Ellington, the leader of the ‘‘greatest band in the history of planet Earth.” Only two students raised their hands.
Listening to and appreciating Ellington was the only way they would be able to play his songs, Marsalis said. ‘‘What chance do you have of speaking French if you’ve never heard it?”
By contrast, all of the jazz band members had written a biography of Marsalis before he came to Springbrook, so they understood the value of his advice, said Dara Wilson, a freshman trumpet player. ‘‘Having a person like that talk to you is very helpful,” she said.
Marsalis then delved into the actual playing of the song, riffing on politics and life as he made his musical points. Swing music, which he called America’s national rhythm akin to the samba in Brazil, reflects American values, he said. The bass and the drums can play their own sound but must respect each other in the context of the whole song, he said, much like Americans can be individuals but must respect each other’s individuality.
‘‘The highest and lowest notes have to be together on every beat, like democracy,” Marsalis said.
When discussing soloing, Marsalis ordered the students to play without looking at sheet music because, he said, a solo comes from inside. ‘‘The most valuable thing you have in life is your perspective,” he said. ‘‘It’s very important to have your own voice.”
For the students, though, the biggest thrill was hearing Marsalis’ musical voice as he played with them. ‘‘It’s one thing to have a classmate play with you. It’s another thing to have Wynton Marsalis,” Wilson said. ‘‘[I did] what many people dream of doing.”
Marsalis played the drums, piano and, of course, trumpet, trying two or three of the students’ ‘‘axes” before finding one he liked. ‘‘Trumpets are temperamental; they only like to play for their owner,” he said to laughter.
Braxton Cook, a sophomore alto saxophone player, performed a solo while Marsalis anchored the rhythm section on the piano. Cook won an award for soloing at the Anaheim festival, but was nervous playing with Marsalis. ‘‘I was so overwhelmed meeting a hero of mine,” Cook said afterward. ‘‘Hearing him play ...”
‘‘... You hear him on YouTube, but then to see him in person...” junior tenor saxophone player Joshua Glaser said, almost finishing the thought.
Marsalis wanted to see the brass section play notes with an edge. ‘‘Do-WHOP, Do-WHOP,” he played on Wilson’s trumpet, emphasizing the last note. (‘‘I’m not going to wash my instrument again,” Wilson said afterward.)
‘‘I want you to play hungry,” Marsalis said. ‘‘A lot of people paid a lot of dues to make this music.”
As time wound down, the full jazz band played once more, this time incorporating Marsalis’ instruction as he conducted. Cook and Glaser said they noticed a difference, and indeed the brass section attacked its notes, the rhythm section was balanced, steady and quiet during solos, and the soloists truly improvised.
American music is about talking, and playing music is supposed to feel good, Marsalis had said earlier, and the band was proving both to be true.
Still, Marsalis stopped the song before it finished. The students were expecting more tough love.
‘‘See how that sounded?” Marsalis said. ‘‘Good.”
The audience cheered.
Showing posts with label Wynton Marsalis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wynton Marsalis. Show all posts
Friday, April 20, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
Wynton Marsalis drops in on the Hudson Valley for a benefit concert
By John W. Barry
Poughkeepsie Journal
The Oakland Raiders.
Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali.
Ichinoseki and Chiba, Japan.
The thread that binds these things may not be obvious. But the man for whom these things rank as favorites will likely be familiar to you, as the face and sound of America’s first family of music, a Pulitzer Prize-winning musician and director of one of the most prestigious jazz halls in the world.
He is Wynton Marsalis, a jazz trumpet player whose cherubic face has evolved into the very personality of that truly American, truly mysterious musical phenomenon called jazz.
Marsalis and his horn croon. They call. And they respond. Sound drips out of this guy’s horn like Sunday morning molasses over a stack of steaming flapjacks.
On Saturday, Marsalis and his quintet will play a sold-out concert at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill. This performance is a benefit concert for the Paramount, the African American Men of Westchester and Historic Hudson Valley.
“It’s just exciting for us to be able to feature someone like Wynton,” said Jon Yanofsky, executive director for the Paramount. “He’s provided an incredibly accessible point of entry into (jazz) and the history of the music for a lot of people.”
The American public knows an awful lot about Marsalis: he is the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and has won nine Grammy Awards. And many know of his brother Branford, who has played with Sting and Bruce Hornsby and served as band leader on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
But what’s the deal with Marsalis and those Oakland Raiders?
“I like everything about them — their black and silver colors and their logo, their quick-strike offense...,” Marsalis is quoted as saying on his Web site, www.wyntonmarsalis.com. “They get amped up on the pressure of a big game, but they don’t get uptight. They’re ferocious, but they never lose their cool.”
And Sugar Ray Robinson? Ali?
“Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest, but my favorite boxer is Muhammad Ali.
Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, I watched all of Muhammad’s classic fights on ‘Wide World of Sports.’ ”
Now, what about those two Japanese cities?
“For part of my early childhood, our family lived in a little town in Louisiana called Kenner, and I’ve always enjoyed the down-home feeling that small towns can have.
As a touring musician I have a lot of favorite towns, just like I have a lot of favorite cities. Ichinoseki and Chiba, in Japan, are two of my favorites. When we play in a small town, all the farmers and other local people will come to check us out, and we get a special feeling from being able to perform for the whole community.”
Raised in New Orleans
Marsalis grew up in New Orleans, the second of six sons, one of whom is autistic. At an early age, he heard his musical calling — loud and clear.
“My father was a musician,” Marsalis said during a recent telephone interview with the Journal. “I had an ability for it. I just came into it.”
At age 8, Marsalis performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band. At 14, he was invited to perform with the New Orleans Philharmonic.
During high school, Marsalis was a member of the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra and New Orleans Symphony. He was also admitted to the Tanglewood Music Center in western Massachusetts at age 17.
After moving to New York City to study music at The Juilliard School, Marsalis joined the Jazz Messengers and studied under the band’s leader, Art Blakey.
From Blakey, Marsalis learned “how to give everything all the time, to truly treat this like it’s a blessing to be a musician. His playing was always serious. He was always about it — in rehearsals, concerts, it didn’t make a difference.”
Marsalis went on to receive commissions to create major compositions for the New York City Ballet, Twyla Tharp for the American Ballet Theatre and for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.
Marsalis has also pursued a career in classical music.
“I like his classical trumpet playing more than I like his jazz trumpet playing,” said jazz trumpet player Matt Jordan of Poughkeepsie, who plays regularly at Ciboney Cafe in Poughkeepsie. “I like his technique. He’s got one of the cleanest, fastest, tongue-ing techniques — very quick, very fast. ... He synchronizes his lip with his mouthpiece and the valves that have to come down to play in perfect tune. Nobody does it better than him.”
In 1987, Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. Three concerts were held the first season, but under the guidance of Marsalis the program now stages up to 400 events annually in 15 countries.
In 1995, the Lincoln Center Board gave the Jazz Department status equal to the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera and New York City Ballet. Jazz at Lincoln Center now occupies a state-of-the art facility on Columbus Circle in Manhattan, that is home to performance spaces and a recording studio.
“Jazz is the art form of America,” Marsalis said. “It is appropriate for it to be in the heart of New York City.”
Poughkeepsie Journal
The Oakland Raiders.
Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali.
Ichinoseki and Chiba, Japan.
The thread that binds these things may not be obvious. But the man for whom these things rank as favorites will likely be familiar to you, as the face and sound of America’s first family of music, a Pulitzer Prize-winning musician and director of one of the most prestigious jazz halls in the world.
He is Wynton Marsalis, a jazz trumpet player whose cherubic face has evolved into the very personality of that truly American, truly mysterious musical phenomenon called jazz.
Marsalis and his horn croon. They call. And they respond. Sound drips out of this guy’s horn like Sunday morning molasses over a stack of steaming flapjacks.
On Saturday, Marsalis and his quintet will play a sold-out concert at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill. This performance is a benefit concert for the Paramount, the African American Men of Westchester and Historic Hudson Valley.
“It’s just exciting for us to be able to feature someone like Wynton,” said Jon Yanofsky, executive director for the Paramount. “He’s provided an incredibly accessible point of entry into (jazz) and the history of the music for a lot of people.”
The American public knows an awful lot about Marsalis: he is the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and has won nine Grammy Awards. And many know of his brother Branford, who has played with Sting and Bruce Hornsby and served as band leader on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
But what’s the deal with Marsalis and those Oakland Raiders?
“I like everything about them — their black and silver colors and their logo, their quick-strike offense...,” Marsalis is quoted as saying on his Web site, www.wyntonmarsalis.com. “They get amped up on the pressure of a big game, but they don’t get uptight. They’re ferocious, but they never lose their cool.”
And Sugar Ray Robinson? Ali?
“Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest, but my favorite boxer is Muhammad Ali.
Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, I watched all of Muhammad’s classic fights on ‘Wide World of Sports.’ ”
Now, what about those two Japanese cities?
“For part of my early childhood, our family lived in a little town in Louisiana called Kenner, and I’ve always enjoyed the down-home feeling that small towns can have.
As a touring musician I have a lot of favorite towns, just like I have a lot of favorite cities. Ichinoseki and Chiba, in Japan, are two of my favorites. When we play in a small town, all the farmers and other local people will come to check us out, and we get a special feeling from being able to perform for the whole community.”
Raised in New Orleans
Marsalis grew up in New Orleans, the second of six sons, one of whom is autistic. At an early age, he heard his musical calling — loud and clear.
“My father was a musician,” Marsalis said during a recent telephone interview with the Journal. “I had an ability for it. I just came into it.”
At age 8, Marsalis performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band. At 14, he was invited to perform with the New Orleans Philharmonic.
During high school, Marsalis was a member of the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra and New Orleans Symphony. He was also admitted to the Tanglewood Music Center in western Massachusetts at age 17.
After moving to New York City to study music at The Juilliard School, Marsalis joined the Jazz Messengers and studied under the band’s leader, Art Blakey.
From Blakey, Marsalis learned “how to give everything all the time, to truly treat this like it’s a blessing to be a musician. His playing was always serious. He was always about it — in rehearsals, concerts, it didn’t make a difference.”
Marsalis went on to receive commissions to create major compositions for the New York City Ballet, Twyla Tharp for the American Ballet Theatre and for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.
Marsalis has also pursued a career in classical music.
“I like his classical trumpet playing more than I like his jazz trumpet playing,” said jazz trumpet player Matt Jordan of Poughkeepsie, who plays regularly at Ciboney Cafe in Poughkeepsie. “I like his technique. He’s got one of the cleanest, fastest, tongue-ing techniques — very quick, very fast. ... He synchronizes his lip with his mouthpiece and the valves that have to come down to play in perfect tune. Nobody does it better than him.”
In 1987, Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. Three concerts were held the first season, but under the guidance of Marsalis the program now stages up to 400 events annually in 15 countries.
In 1995, the Lincoln Center Board gave the Jazz Department status equal to the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera and New York City Ballet. Jazz at Lincoln Center now occupies a state-of-the art facility on Columbus Circle in Manhattan, that is home to performance spaces and a recording studio.
“Jazz is the art form of America,” Marsalis said. “It is appropriate for it to be in the heart of New York City.”
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Metropolitan Opera Commissions New Work from Wynton Marsalis and John Guare
By Matthew Westphal
August 15, 2006
The Metropolitan Opera has commissioned a new opera from composer/jazz powerhouse Wynton Marsalis and award-winning playwright John Guare. The project was revealed during an interview Met general manager Peter Gelb gave to Playbill.com yesterday.
The venture is in its earliest stages, so no subject or working title has yet been chosen and no anticipated completion date has yet been set, according to a Met spokesperson.
Marsalis is, of course, a world-renowned trumpeter and bandleader; he is the founding artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and music director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He plays classical as well as jazz trumpet and has made several classical recordings, including a best-selling disc of duets with soprano Kathleen Battle. Among Marsalis's classical compositions are the chamber works At the Octoroon Balls and A Fiddler's Tale (a response to Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat), both co-commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; the orchestral score Them Twos, written for New York City Ballet; and the oratorio All Rise for big band, gospel choir and symphony orchestra, premiered by Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic.
Guare, winner of the Tony, Obie, Drama Desk, Olivier and many other awards and honors, is the author of, among other plays, Six Degrees of Separation, House of Blue Leaves, Bosoms and Neglect, Four Baboons Adoring the Sun, Marco Polo Sings a Solo and Lydie Breeze. While he wrote the libretto for the 1972 musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona, this will be his first opera text.
The Marsalis/Guare commission is part of Gelb's endeavor to increase collaboration between the Metropolitan Opera and the vibrant New York theater scene — and to acquaint drama lovers with the theatrical power opera can offer. The centerpiece of that effort is a long-term collaboration with Lincoln Center Theater on a series of projects that, depending on how they develop, could end up as large-scale operas, chamber operas or serious musicals seen on either company's stage. Among the other participants in this project are composer Jake Heggie, who has already written the operas Dead Man Walking and The End of the Affair; Michael John LaChiusa, who has written music and text of both musicals (The Wild Party, Hello Again, Bernarda Alba) and operas (Lovers and Friends (Chautauqua Variations) and Send (who are you? i love you), which premiered at Houston Grand Opera earlier this year with Audra McDonald); music theater composer Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza, Floyd Collins); the composer/librettist team of Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner (Caroline, or Change and the new adaptation of Brecht's Mother Courage starring Meryl Streep currently playing in Central Park); and renowned folk-pop singer/male diva/opera queen Rufus Wainwright.
Among other upcoming Met projects involving theater luminaries are a new production of Tosca for fall 2009 directed by former New York Shakespeare Festival head George C. Wolfe; a Carmen for that same season directed by Richard Eyre (former head of Great Britain's Royal National Theatre), cheoreographed by Matthew Bourne (best known for his Swan Lake with male swans) and starring Angela Gheorghiu; and a new Wagner Ring cycle for 2010-11 staged by director/filmmaker/auteur Robert Lepage.
The Met's 2006-07 season opens on Monday, September 25, with a new production of Madama Butterfly directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Anthony Minghella. Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Marcello Giordani and Dwayne Croft star; Asher Fisch conducts; the run continues with 11 more performances through November 18.
August 15, 2006
The Metropolitan Opera has commissioned a new opera from composer/jazz powerhouse Wynton Marsalis and award-winning playwright John Guare. The project was revealed during an interview Met general manager Peter Gelb gave to Playbill.com yesterday.
The venture is in its earliest stages, so no subject or working title has yet been chosen and no anticipated completion date has yet been set, according to a Met spokesperson.
Marsalis is, of course, a world-renowned trumpeter and bandleader; he is the founding artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and music director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He plays classical as well as jazz trumpet and has made several classical recordings, including a best-selling disc of duets with soprano Kathleen Battle. Among Marsalis's classical compositions are the chamber works At the Octoroon Balls and A Fiddler's Tale (a response to Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat), both co-commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; the orchestral score Them Twos, written for New York City Ballet; and the oratorio All Rise for big band, gospel choir and symphony orchestra, premiered by Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic.
Guare, winner of the Tony, Obie, Drama Desk, Olivier and many other awards and honors, is the author of, among other plays, Six Degrees of Separation, House of Blue Leaves, Bosoms and Neglect, Four Baboons Adoring the Sun, Marco Polo Sings a Solo and Lydie Breeze. While he wrote the libretto for the 1972 musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona, this will be his first opera text.
The Marsalis/Guare commission is part of Gelb's endeavor to increase collaboration between the Metropolitan Opera and the vibrant New York theater scene — and to acquaint drama lovers with the theatrical power opera can offer. The centerpiece of that effort is a long-term collaboration with Lincoln Center Theater on a series of projects that, depending on how they develop, could end up as large-scale operas, chamber operas or serious musicals seen on either company's stage. Among the other participants in this project are composer Jake Heggie, who has already written the operas Dead Man Walking and The End of the Affair; Michael John LaChiusa, who has written music and text of both musicals (The Wild Party, Hello Again, Bernarda Alba) and operas (Lovers and Friends (Chautauqua Variations) and Send (who are you? i love you), which premiered at Houston Grand Opera earlier this year with Audra McDonald); music theater composer Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza, Floyd Collins); the composer/librettist team of Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner (Caroline, or Change and the new adaptation of Brecht's Mother Courage starring Meryl Streep currently playing in Central Park); and renowned folk-pop singer/male diva/opera queen Rufus Wainwright.
Among other upcoming Met projects involving theater luminaries are a new production of Tosca for fall 2009 directed by former New York Shakespeare Festival head George C. Wolfe; a Carmen for that same season directed by Richard Eyre (former head of Great Britain's Royal National Theatre), cheoreographed by Matthew Bourne (best known for his Swan Lake with male swans) and starring Angela Gheorghiu; and a new Wagner Ring cycle for 2010-11 staged by director/filmmaker/auteur Robert Lepage.
The Met's 2006-07 season opens on Monday, September 25, with a new production of Madama Butterfly directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Anthony Minghella. Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Marcello Giordani and Dwayne Croft star; Asher Fisch conducts; the run continues with 11 more performances through November 18.