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Jack Massarik's rating
London calling Wynton Marsalis
By
Jack Massarik
27 Jul 2009
Friday at the Barbican found trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his 15-piece Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in flamenco mood. Their Basque suite, for a summer festival at Vitoria, was written by Marsalis and Chano Dominguez, a Cadiz pianist whose keyboard duels with JLCO’s Dan Nimmer and interplay with hand-drummer Israel “El Pirana” Suarez were sensational.
The suite’s brass ensembles and tricky handclap patterns were led by a trumpet section with Sean Jones, Ryan Kisor, Marcus Printup and Wynton in top form. So was exiled Norwich trombonist Elliot Mason, whose parents took a bow. “They’re from Gnaw-witch,” said Marsalis.
This top-class weekend underlined London’s growing status in the jazz world, a fact recognised by the JLCO’s newly-announced Barbican residency next June. It will host Guildhall masterclasses, jams with UK pros, teach schools in east London and give concerts at the Barbican and Hackney Empire. How many new stars might this create?
JLCO tickets on sale from 1 October (020 7382 7321).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Reader views (2)
Jazz is most certainly alive and kicking! The JALC orchestra is proof positive and all that you need is a set of ears and a heartbeat to capture the spirit of swing that jazz brings to our world. There are various levels of artistic talent and merit in all forms of music that can be viewed in tones of a downward spiral - but I prefer to think of jazz as an upbeat flow of positive energy.
- John Kleiner, Greenfield, USA, 28/07/2009 21:47
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Doesn't Jan Massarik know that Jazz is a dead art form: it was moribund from the late 1950s in America and from the early 1960s in this country when the famous Soho Jazz clubs like the Flamingo switched to R&B. Since then it has led a posthumous existence as a facsimile of its former self and, as is so often the case when there is copying in the arts, it frequently lapses into caricature. Jazz courses at music colleges (what could be more bourgeois), usually taught by has-beens and second-raters, produce young performers who play their instruments well but whose imrovisations are of little artistic merit. Jazz was always quintessentially bohemian; now that it's an antiquarian academic study it's become decaffeinated or perhaps I should say dealcoholised. Duke Ellington was regularly offered honorary doctorates and teaching professorships but always declined saying, "Man, if I did that I'd go green - I'm just a whorehouse pianist."
- Richard Kennard, Welling, 27/07/2009 13:26
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