Wynton Marsalis

[Mikey]

I was privileged to be able to see the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra Tuesday night in a small auditorium on the UC San Diego campus. This group is a classic jazz ensemble, with 4 trumpets (Marsalis plays trumpet and is music director), 3 trombones, 5 reeds, piano, bass and drums. The reeds were usually 2 alto saxes, 2 tenors and a baritone, but they all switched off to various combinations of sax, flute, piccolo and clarinet.

This was an amazing performance. These guys are all virtuoso performers on their various instruments. The set consisted of pretty much mainstream classic jazz numbers, written by such artists as Joe Henderson, Horace Silver and Wayne Shorter, with arrangements by the various band members. The set lasted about 80 minutes with probably 8 to 10 numbers (I didn't count). Different soloists were featured on every song, in fact Marsalis only had two solos - in the first and last selections. At times it seemed like Marsalis was channeling early 60s Miles, but I guess you could say that about just about any modern jazz trumpet player.

Anyway, the arrangements were awesome and the ensemble playing was impeccable. The solos were all great. I think I liked the two Horace Silver compositions, both sounding Brazilian - one a samba and the other a bossa nova - the best overall. There was one song called Walking Blues (can't remember the composer) that had an amazing understated alto solo that just about brought the audience to its feet when they guy was done.

Wynton Marsalis gets a lot of criticism for only featuring "traditional" style jazz and not really recognizing more recent stuff. But...he does what he does and this was a thoroughly enjoyable show. My son plays trombone in the school jazz band, in an ensemble with a similar mix of instruments. This was the first concert of this type of music and quality that he's seen, and he was pretty much blown away by the performance.

[Cosmo Kramer]

If you like Jazz, I would reccommend Waymon Tisdale's Rebound....Give it a try

[Mikey]

Not too much of a fan of "smooth jazz". At least not since about 1980 or so when the entire genre jumped the shark with the emergence of Kenny G.

May have to give Tisdale a spin though.

[Cosmo Kramer]

It's a little better than "smooth jazz" and he does a song with Toby Keith that is really cool....Look at amazon.com for the cd and you can sample the songs. I agree with your take on Kenny G....it's kind of like Michael Bolton trying to play Rock

[Mikey]

It's a little better than "smooth jazz" and he does a song with Toby Keith that is really cool....Look at amazon.com for the cd and you can sample the songs. I agree with your take on Kenny G....it's kind of like Michael Bolton trying to play Rock

I was interested 'til you mentioned "he does a song with Toby Keith".

I think he meant Toby Keith, the famous 50s era jazz-fusion electric clarinet player.

[smackaholic]

there's nothing wrong with staying in the "traditional" jazz genre since it is light years better than contemporary smoove jazz.

does he do any dave brubeck stuff?

can any of the newer contemporary alto blowers do justice to paul desmond pieces. he is the bestest jazz alto player out there. well, he was till he went and got dead.

as for channeling early 60s miles, i'm not sure if wynton really wants to consume the amount of heroin required to do that.

[King Crimson]

I saw Wynton sometime in the mid 90's. I was kind of skeptical to be honest....because he wasn't really all that highly thought of compared to some other younger players at the time who certainly weren't ever going to be on Letterman. he was paying homage to the tradition but not really doing anything new, that sort of thing. but, it was a cool show. much better, sad to admit, than the Sonny Rollins show i saw a couple months before. Sonny was doing some kind of hip hop thing that wasn't working and just not a great show from the guy that Coltrane used to copy.

not a fan at all of smooth jazz, despite my abiding love and respect for Wayman Tisdale.