• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Newcity Music

Reviews, profiles and news about music in Chicago

  • Newcity
    • Newcity Network
    • Best of Chicago
  • Art
  • Brazil
  • Design
  • Film
  • Lit
  • Music
    • About Newcity Music
    • Contributors
    • Chicago Indie Record Store Guide
  • Resto
  • Stage

Preview: Wynton Marsalis & the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra

January 17, 2008 at 10:09 am by Jan Hieggelke

by Jan Hieggelke
January 17, 2008April 23, 2012Filed under:
  • Jazz

RECOMMENDED
The great innovators of jazz who lived long enough to encounter controversial trumpeter Wynton Marsalis had mixed reactions to him. Late Miles Davis drummer and fusion founder Tony Williams—an early supporter of Marsalis who engaged him for a time in V.S.O.P. and who played on Marsalis’ 1981 debut album—loved his tone but felt that “every lick he played was recycled Miles.” Davis himself threw Marsalis off the stage when he came out unannounced to perform with him, and though bebop patriarch Dizzy Gillespie acknowledged Marsalis’ lack of innovation, Gillespie felt that “you can’t take anything away from that boy, ’cause he can play.” Today Marsalis can indeed still play, though having developed no particular musical voice of his own, he has instead raised his verbal voice to preach a narrow, evangelical and traditional view of what “true” jazz is and has vast and influential supporters, particularly filmmaker Ken Burns, who bought the Gospel of Wynton hook, line and sinker in his embarrassing PBS “Jazz” documentary series. Marsalis returns to familiar terrain, that of Duke Ellington, by exploring love songs written by and for Ellington and his band with the virtuoso fifteen-piece Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in a concert appearance (Friday night) and a special “Jazz For Young People” event (Saturday morning) that will feature Marsalis evangelizing on “What Is Swing?” with live examples from himself and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Bring the kids for the music, cover their ears during the talks. (Dennis Polkow)
Friday, January 18 at Symphony Center

Author: Jan Hieggelke

Related

Tagged:
  • Dizzy Gillespie
  • Duke Ellington
  • Jazz
  • Jazz For Young People
  • Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra
  • Miles Davis
  • Symphony Center
  • Tony Williams
  • Wynton Marsalis

Post navigation

Previous Post Preview: William Elliot Whitmore
Next Post Preview: Too Hot to Handel: The Jazz-Gospel Messiah

Primary Sidebar

Popular Stories

  • A Whole Wide World of Wisdom: A Preview of Wreckless Eric at The Burlington
    A Whole Wide World of Wisdom: A Preview of Wreckless Eric at The Burlington
  • Their Time: Why Arctic Monkeys May Be the World’s Best Band
    Their Time: Why Arctic Monkeys May Be the World’s Best Band
  • Chicago "Now": How the Legendary Horn Band is Redefining its Future
    Chicago "Now": How the Legendary Horn Band is Redefining its Future
  • Immaterial World: Ken Kurson Examines the Void Left by Jim Ellison's Death
    Immaterial World: Ken Kurson Examines the Void Left by Jim Ellison's Death
  • Music Top 5: April 2018
    Music Top 5: April 2018

Copyright Newcity Communications, Inc. © 2018