High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival in New York City, May 4-6, 2012

• Ballard High School, Seattle, WA
• Beloit Memorial High School, Beloit, WI
• Champaign Central High School, Champaign, IL
• DeKalb High School, DeKalb, IL
• Dillard Center for the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL
• Eau Claire North High School, Eau Claire, WI
• Esperanza High School, Anaheim, CA
• Genoa City Union High School, Lake Geneva, WI
• Lakota East High School, Liberty Township, OH
• Medfield High School, Medfield, MA
• Mountlake Terrace High School, Mountlake Terrace, WA
• New World School of the Arts, Miami, FL
• Newark Academy, Newark, NJ
• Rio Americano High School, Sacramento, CA
• Roosevelt High School, Seattle, WA

Winner of Community Band Category:
Tucson Jazz Institute, Tucson, AZ

Who/What:
Jazz at Lincoln Center announces the 15 finalist bands and one winning community band for its prestigious 17th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival. The bands will compete and participate in workshops, jam sessions, and more, during a three-day Competition & Festival in New York City. The three top-placing bands perform with Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis, as guest soloist, followed by a performance by the 15-piece Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra – whose members serve as mentors for the finalist bands throughout the weekend. The Festival’s finale is an awards ceremony honoring outstanding soloists, sections and the top three bands. The Competition & Festival is the culmination of the annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Program (EE), which also includes regional festivals, teaching resources, a summer Band Director Academy, monthly newsletters, and more.

Judges: WYNTON MARSALIS, DAVID BERGER, BILL DOBBINS, JEFFREY HAMILTON, SHERMAN IRBY.

In-School Clinicians: RONALD CARTER, VICTOR GOINES, SHERMAN IRBY, TED NASH, MARCUS PRINTUP, LOREN SCHOENBERG, REGINALD THOMAS, RODNEY WHITAKER

Mentors: members of the JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA

When/Where:
Competition & Festival: May 4-6 at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Final Concert: May 6 at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, 7:30pm.

How:
Free tickets for each Competition Part will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis, one hour before the start of each concert on May 5 and May 6.

Tickets for the Concert and Awards Ceremony are $20 or $25 and available now at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, by calling CenterCharge at 212-721-6500 or at jalc.org

For more information including background, a schedule of events, photos, audio featuring SiriusXM’s programs on EE, and more, visit: jalc.org/essentiallyellington

Background/Statistics:
Throughout March and April, Jazz at Lincoln Center will send, free of charge, a professional musician to each of the 15 finalist and winning community band schools to lead an intensive day-long workshop of rehearsals, lessons, and master classes. The free clinics are part of the rich 16-year history of this unique music education program, which has reached more than 304,000 students in more than 4,000 high schools across all 50 U.S. states, Canada, Australia and American schools abroad. EE has produced and distributed more than 120,000 copies of 98 previously unavailable scores and 237 finalist bands have traveled to New York City to participate in the annual Competition & Festival.

• This year Jazz at Lincoln Center distributed more than 10,200 newly transcribed scores, reference recordings and additional educational materials.
• While the music of Duke Ellington continues to be central to Essentially Ellington, in 2008, Jazz at Lincoln Center expanded Essentially Ellington repertoire to include other seminal big band composers including Benny Carter and Mary Lou Williams. The 2011-12 Essentially Ellington season is the first time in the history of the program that repertoire composed by Dizzy Gillespie will be included in the program. Repertoire includes, Duke Ellington’s “Riding On a Blue Note,” “Sepia Panorama,” and from The Queen’s Suite, “Sunset and The Mocking Bird,” and Dizzy Gillespie’s, “Night in Tunisia,” “Oop Bop Sh’Bam,” and “Things To Come.”
• This year 1,715 high schools in the United States, Canada, and American schools in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, New Zealand, People’s Republic of China, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and Zimbabwe received Essentially Ellington materials.
• 111 bands entered the competition by submitting a recorded performance of three compositions.
• The entries were evaluated in a blind screening by jazz education experts RONALD CARTER, STEVE FIDYK, SHERMAN IRBY, and LOREN SCHOENBERG.
• 15 finalists and one community band were selected.

Quotes:
“It is extremely gratifying to see the results of the seeds we sowed 16 years ago when we started Essentially Ellington. The improvement in the quality of the bands down through the years attests to the artistic substance of Duke Ellington’s music. The enthusiasm and dedication of students, families, band directors, judges, and alumni testify to the timeless American values that define this competition and festival. I’m looking forward to hearing this year’s finalists; it is my favorite time of year.”
Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center

“As a former high school band director I have witnessed firsthand the power of Ellington’s music; it changes how young people view themselves in relation to our culture, their communities and each other. From the band directors across the country who tirelessly teach this music, to the parents who hear the hours of practicing at home, we are thrilled to provide a resource that brings together multiple generations of participants. As the finalists prepare for the weekend in New York, as we say here, swing away!”
Todd Stoll, Director of Education, Jazz at Lincoln Center

Sponsorship:
Founding leadership support for Essentially Ellington is provided by The Jack and Susan Rudin Educational and Scholarship Fund. Major support is provided by The Con Edison Community Partnership Fund, The Irene Diamond Fund, Gail and Alfred Engelberg, The Ella Fitzgerald Foundation, The Dexter Gordon Foundation in honor of Samuel Browne, The William Randolph Hearst Foundation, The Heckscher Foundation for Children, The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation, Nathan P. Jacobs Foundation, The Mericos Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Surdna Foundation, and the United States Department of Education.

Wynton Marsalis recently gave the third of six epic lectures that he is slated to give at Harvard University. He promised that this one wasn’t going to be 4 and half hours long, as the last one was. When he got started, the result was part history lesson, part concert, part spoken-word poetry reading. Three hours into the show, his agenda became clear: He was telling a timeless story about love. For Charlie “Yardbird’’ Parker, inventor of bebop. For Bessie Smith, teller of the low-down nasty truth. For Woody Guthrie, who sang about running from the law. For all those who sang about being both broke and broken-hearted. For every artist who cared more about art than celebrity.
Like every great blues man, Marsalis was lamenting the loss of something he loves. Jazz and the blues are falling by the wayside. Young people don’t understand how crucial this music is to America’s integration as a people. Identifying a blues song should be part of any citizenship test, he says: “If you can’t do that, you are not ready to be here yet.’’

Tickets to this extraordinary lecture series have been free to members of the public who get to the box office in time. Marsalis has even spent time teaching Cambridge school children. Marsalis and Harvard should be commended for giving these lectures to future generations. They ought to go one step further and put them online for the world to enjoy.

Boston Globe Editorial

Check these articles about the Lecture on Harvard Gazette:

- The melding of American music

- Notes on music’s lessons

Check some pictures from rehearsals, sound check and lecture

Marsalis’ third lecture, “Meet Me at the Crossroad,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. and include musical illustrations by acclaimed musicians, including Doug Wamble (guitar and vocals), Herlin Riley (drums), Houston Person (tenor sax), Lucky Peterson (organ and piano), Reginald Veal (bass), and Brianna Thomas (vocals).

“The blues, American folk music, gospel, American popular song, hillbilly, bluegrass, country western, and jazz are root styles of our national music,” Marsalis said. “This lecture will identify the similarities and differences of those roots, and explain why they are musically compatible.”
In addition to his lecture-performance, Marsalis will spend the following day on the Harvard campus, appearing in a panel on “Educating for Moral Agency and Engaged Citizenship” held at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and co-hosted by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Later that day he will participate in a discussion at Harvard’s new Innovation Lab to talk about the artist as entrepreneur.

Marsalis launched his lecture series last April before a sold-out house with “Music as Metaphor,” a two-hour journey through the history of American music, punctuated with performances by renowned bluegrass and jazz musicians. He returned to campus in September with a team of dancers for his second lecture, “The Double Crossing of a Pair of Heels: The Dynamics of Social Dance and American Popular Musics,” which traced the evolution of American social dance from the Charleston to the fox trot and the tango to the twist.

“Marsalis’ prior lectures have illustrated vividly the ways in which the arts have intertwined with the history and culture of our country,” Harvard President Drew Faust said. “Just as importantly, they have acted as catalysts for activity on our campus, prompting class discussions, inspiring study, and elevating the arts across campus. I look forward to hearing him again next month.”

In addition to his lectures, Marsalis has engaged in dialogue with students across the University and throughout the community, teaching a master class and holding a question-and-answer session with students from Harvard and local public high schools.
Marsalis’ lecture is one of several arts events taking place throughout the year as part of Harvard’s 375th anniversary celebration. The Marsalis lecture series highlights the University’s focus on the arts since a 2008 presidential task force called for increasing the presence of the arts on campus.

Tickets for Marsalis’ lecture at Sanders will be free. They will become available for the Harvard community Jan. 26 and for the public Jan. 27. For information on obtaining tickets.

From “Hellbound Highball” to “Happy Feet Blues,” this collection of works is the greatest retrospective of Wynton as a composer.

For the first time, Wynton Marsalis brings you this self-curated 2-CD set featuring ONLY his compositions.
Performed by a diverse group of artists including musicians from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orion String Quartet, Mark O’Connor, members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Danny Barker.
Preview the songs and buy the album

The gala will honor Lisa Schiff, Chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center, for her brilliant leadership over the past decade and bestow upon her the organization’s Ed Bradley Award for Leadership in Jazz.

The concert will be comprised of songs from throughout Simon’s career, all arranged by Marsalis and members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Simon and Marsalis have worked together twice before, but these concerts will mark their first time performing full concerts with one another. In addition to the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Simon will bring with him his own band. The incomparable Aaron Neville will join the group as a featured guest on selected songs.

“Paul Simon is a great American songwriter of astonishing diversity and invention in the lineage of George Gershwin, Chuck Berry and Stephen Sondheim. We, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, are in the lineage of Duke Ellington, Gil Evans and Thad Jones. Both of us share a common heritage with all of those titans, and we will do our best to further the highest of their aspirations for our national music,” said Marsalis. “We are excited that Paul accepted our invitation. It will be a night steeped in the sound of the blues, folk song, gospel and regional accents of America. We have every intention of speaking our mutual language through the art of improvisation and in the international sound of African inflected groove.”

“I’m looking forward to hearing how Wynton imagines his horn section framing and coloring my songs,” said Simon. “The integration of our two bands should provide a rare opportunity for unique and joyful collaboration. Anyway, it’ll be big.”

David Beahm, in his 10th year as the designer for the Jazz at Lincoln Center gala dinner décor, will generously donate his services in honor of Lisa Schiff. Dinner will be served by Great Performances, the exclusive in-house caterer for Jazz at Lincoln Center.

When:
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Jazz at Lincoln Center Annual Gala and Concert
7pm concert in Rose Theater
9pm dinner in The Allen Room and Atrium

Thursday, April 19 and Friday, April 20, 2012
8pm concert in Rose Theater

Where:
Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center
Broadway at 60th Street, New York, New York.

Gala Tickets:
Gala tickets begin at $1,500 and tables begin at $20,000. Contact Stacie Middleton Crawford at scrawford@jalc.org.

Concert tickets for April 19 & 20:
Tickets for concerts on April 19 & 20 will be available to Jazz at Lincoln Center members and subscribers with a MasterCard starting January 30, 2012. Tickets will go on sale to the general public on February 3, 2012. All ticket sales will be handled through CenterCharge at 212-721-6500 or the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office at Broadway and 60th Street inside Time Warner Center.
MasterCard cardholders will also have access to purchase a quantity of the best seats in house located in the orchestra section through MasterCard’s Priceless NY website (www.pricelessny.com). Quantities are limited.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office is open Monday through Saturday, 10am-6pm, and Sundays, 12pm-6pm. There is a maximum of two tickets per household.

Press Inquiries:
Mary Fiance Fuss, Director, Public Relations
email: mfuss@jalc.org
phone: (212) 258-9829

Judee Cohen for Jazz at Lincoln Center
email: judithdeecohen@gmail.com
phone: (917) 721-0663

Unedited Version of the Essay

I grew up in segregated towns in Louisiana: Breaux Bridge, Little Farms, Kenner….the old south. My parents sat behind screens on buses well into adulthood. Our world was entirely black.

I was in the second grade when Martin Luther king Jr. was assassinated. We were sent home early that day. I had absolutely no sense of who he was at the time.

The next year my brothers and I went to the white school across the tracks. My momma said change wouldn’t come from complaining. King had sacrificed, so should we. And for us, integration came at a steep price. Just your nicknames alone, like Mr. Magoo or Blackie or Burnt Toast, or the fact that you would get a toy monkey every time kids exchanged gifts at Christmas. It was tough…but we had more in common with the white kids than segregation would have us believe. Simple things like…you all hated Friday fish squares but loved sloppy joes. Still, all the sloppy joes in the world weren’t going to extinguish the flames of injustice that singed anything brown.

As I grew into teenage-hood the integration experience left a bitter taste in my mouth. The street level feeling about Martin Luther King was that he was a dreamer and not enough of a revolutionary. That he was accomodationist and old school. To the youth, his image was not as alluring as the dashiki clad big- Afro black revolutionary. The suit, skinny tie and Negro preacher language was passé. We were BLACK anyway. And, his nuanced conception of a unified America (in which all was forgiven) was not as dramatic, appealing, or strident as the Black Power narrative. The proverbial ‘line drawn in the sand’ always enflames the passions of the disaffected. It was next to impossible to love and forgive. You wanted to hate and scream for revenge.

‘This was 350 years of oppression come crashing down on you,’ and King is asking you to whisper instead of holler. Man, you must be crazy! That’s why the poster over my bed in high school wasn’t King, it was Malcolm X. Anyway, Malcolm’s autobiography was better known than anything King ever wrote. My understanding of King would change dramatically one night in New York City.

When I was 17 and recently moved, I was arguing with a young white college student in a jazz club, Mikell’s, on 97th and Columbus. Provoked by his accurate observation that black people didn’t patronize jazz clubs, we began arguing about contemporary race relations. He went on and on about the greatness of King. I said, “Man, King was an Uncle Tom.” He looked at me as if I had lost my mind and asked if I had ever read Letter from Birmingham City Jail, had I read Why We Cant Wait, or Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? I tried to pretend I had. He then said, “Of course you haven’t because, YOU’RE BLACK AND YOU ALL NEVER KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR HISTORY OR CULTURE.”

At that moment, I was ashamed. Shamed to admit to myself that the truths of this great man, who had just recently improved the quality of my life as an American, WERE largely unknown to me.

I began reading Dr. King’s books and about him, and discovered a powerful revolutionary who transformed our way of living. He actualized the American dream in the truest sense of the word, entering Morehouse College at 15 to receive a classical education. He went on to sculpt a unique poetry. One that created a direct association between the Bible and the Constitution, and the way we treat one another. He created a bridge between the struggle of the Negro and the Judeo-Christian tradition (that most of America leadership ascribed to at that time). He flipped the script on our common religious themes, which were read to say that black people were on the bottom where they should be, and taught our country how to reassess a common spiritual heritage.

Honest religious intellectuals, like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reinhold Niebuhr recognized the artistry and mastery of his insight, and welcomed his innovative methods of counter-stating a ‘segregated church’ narrative that was clearly indefensible.

With an irresistible lyricism, Dr. King galvanized an All-American army from all walks of life… believers, thirsty for change…citizens willing to sacrifice for the most essential national concern: freedom. Their achievements together, in the cause of justice, exposed racism as immoral. We now live a national reality shaped by their actions and deeds.

In spite of that fact, today, too many of us remember Dr. King as an idealistic dreamer who led a social movement exclusively for black folks. This does him and us a great disservice.

Fact is, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. IS action. Under his generalship, civilian forces of labor, clergy, youth, and even politicians marched to a string of great victories: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 amongst others. These laws made racism illegal, and made us all better Americans.

Those are FACTS even though we may FEEL that King led a movement exclusively for black people. We may FEEL that he was a passive dreamer, but who amongst us goes to the doctor to ask how she FEELS about our health? We accept that you can feel fine and be one step from death’s door. And just as knowledge of family medical history affects a doctor’s diagnosis, knowledge of national cultural history is of central importance to an accurate social prognosis.

We owe it to ourselves to embrace the FACTS about Dr. King’s work and seek the appropriate prescription for what ails us. We owe it to ourselves to embrace his beliefs, philosophies, and actions. We owe it to ourselves to read his works.

His writing and soaring rhetoric was poetry itself, glittered with cultural references. Just a cursory glance and we see references to Washington Irving, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, John Donne, Victor Hugo, Thoreau….on and on. He used artists and poets throughout history to provide a context for our struggles and a blueprint for reaching higher ground.

The legacy of Dr. King is all around us. It’s all up in us. The churches we attend, he attended. The songs we sing, he sang. The highways we drive, he drove. Even back then, he preached timeless human fundamentals that we all share. He once said, “Everybody has the blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. paid the ultimate price to bring our nation together in the fight for freedom. The power of a unified national community is something that we have forgotten.

It’s up to us to revive and sustain it. Today and Always.

Wynton

*Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Opening Address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival.
WPFW News (Washington), [23 August 2002]*

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create—and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

This is triumphant music.

Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.

And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.

In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.

Facebook
Livestream

Happy Holidays!
Love, Wynton.

“The world already knows Wynton as a virtuoso,” said Rhodes. “Less well known is his passion for education, for bringing together young and old, and for American culture in general: a passion he’s developed traveling across the country and the world over the course of his storied career.”

Few people have made as wide or deep a mark on contemporary culture as Wynton Marsalis. Celebrated for his contributions as a performer, composer, bandleader and educator, Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards, and is the only artist in history to have received Grammy’s for five consecutive years and the only artist to have received a Grammy for both jazz and classical music in the same year (1983).

Marsalis has been Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center since 1987. Under his direction, the organization offers a full array of education, performance, and broadcast productions, including national and international touring by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and others.

As a performer, he has toured 30 countries around the world and made more than 70 recordings—including three Gold Records. These recordings feature his trademark swinging style and inclusive approach to jazz. A passionate admirer of classical music, Marsalis has also recorded a number of classical works as a trumpet soloist and has performed with a variety of orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and London’s Royal Philharmonic.

He has given generously of his time and talent to students of all ages, conducting master classes, music lessons for countless individuals, and lectures at a wide variety of institutions. He also wrote and hosted an educational series, “Marsalis on Music,” which debuted on PBS in 1995. That same year, National Public Radio began airing his 26-week radio program, “Making the Music.” For these two outstanding expositions of jazz music, Marsalis won a George Foster Peabody Award. In addition, he has authored or co-authored a number of books, including Sweet Swing Blues on the Road (1994), Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life (2001), To a Young Musician: Letters from the Road (2004), Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits (2005), and most recently, Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life (2008). In the spring of 2010 Marsalis launched a multi-year lecture series at Harvard University to convey the importance of cultural literacy to America’s future leaders and to illuminate the relationship between American music and the American identity.

Marsalis began performing at the age of eight. At 14, he performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic, and during his high school years he was performing with the orchestras and jazz bands around his New Orleans. At the age of 17, he was the youngest musician ever admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center, where he received the Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. The following year, he moved to New York City to attend the Juilliard School, and soon afterwards began performing at venues around the city. In 1980, he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and in 1981 he formed his own band, spending the next 15 years on the road, performing more than 120 concerts a year and working with jazz legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Sweets Edison, Sarah Vaughn, Herbie Hancock and Sonny Rollins.

Marsalis’ extraordinary contribution to the arts and education has earned him more than 25 honorary degrees from some of America’s most prestigious universities and colleges including Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Howard and Yale. Other distinctions include The National Medal of Arts; The New York Urban League’s Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership; the American Arts Council’s Arts Education Award. He has received accolades from the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Great Britain, and in 2001, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed him a UN Messenger of Peace.
Marsalis continues to tour the globe as a performer, conductor, and lecturer.

Press contact:  Sonya McNair  mcnairs@cbsnews.com  T: 212.9752888

And then there was this wish….

“Starting around Thanksgiving, visitors to the Time Warner Center were subjected to recorded music blasted at the exterior, as well as on the first floor. According to a spokesman for the developer, the Related Cos., the music was commissioned to go with the light show inside the atrium…..But the music was too loud, too electronic, too slow. Far from jolly, it sounded like a dirge composed on a shoddy keyboard. It made me not want to go to the Time Warner Center….In a city that is already painfully noisy, this is another assault on the senses. The Time Warner Center is certainly not alone in this nuisance, but the property also happens to be the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which collaborates regularly with Related. If we’re going to be forced to listen to holiday music, please—at the very least—why can’t it swing?”

Lo and behold, the collaboration I wished for has happened. Gone is the atonal, anti-Christmas soundscape of yore. It has been replaced with jazz renditions of holiday classics recorded by Wynton Marsalis and members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for the full-length album “Christmas Jazz Jam.”

There’s a New Orleans-style version of “O Christmas Tree” and a very Marsalis “Jingle Bells.” The music starts at 5 p.m.—and prior to that time, innocuous background music is played at inoffensive levels. When the jazzy Christmas tunes start, the 14-foot stars dangling from the atrium ceiling flash in time with the music for what’s billed as “Holiday Under the Stars.”

Of course, Culture City would never be so vulgar as to claim sole credit for what is clearly a brilliant—if completely obvious—collaboration. As it happens, the good folks at Related, the developer of the Time Warner Center, had this idea since the building opened in 2005. “I thought it was simple,” said the chairman and CEO of Related, Stephen M. Ross. “You want to create something special that people want to see. It takes time.”

Regardless of why it took six years (and one kvetching column, perhaps?) for this musical partnership to happen, I’m just happy that it did: It turns everyone walking through the Time Warner Center into a jazz listener. And that’s good for the music.

It also coincides with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s new holiday concert, “A New Holiday Revue” to be performed Dec. 15 to 17 with singer Kim Burrell. “People are always asking for more orchestra concerts,” said Mr. Marsalis, JALC artistic director. “We’re doing a Big Band concert with new arrangements.”

On tap are popular songs like “What Child Is This” and Leroy Anderson’s peppy “Sleigh Ride,” a favorite of the trumpet-playing Mr. Marsalis since he was in high school. “The trumpet makes the horse sound, and I always loved that,” he said.

As for contributing jazz to the Time Warner Center’s public spaces, Mr. Marsalis says it’s part of fostering a community feeling. “We want to be a part of it,” he said. “We’re always trying to figure out how to be better neighbors.”

Better living through jazz? That really does call for a toast.

Levine’s Impact
On a less happy note: The opera world heaved a collective groan Friday night when the Metropolitan Opera announced that music director James Levine will not conduct this spring nor in the 2012-13 season. Mr. Levine has been recuperating from three back surgeries and an injury, but he cannot commit to performance dates, even those far in advance.

Though he won’t be at the helm of the orchestra, what’s important to note is that the Levine era is not over. As he said in his statement, he will be fit enough to continue his other duties, such as artistic planning, coaching singers and working with the singers and pianists in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, which he founded in 1980.

That he will be able to continue to exert his musical influence is significant. Take it from soprano Deborah Voigt: “Maestro Levine has been one of the most important inspirations for me throughout my career, a collaborator, teacher and confidante,” she said in an email Friday night.

While the best-case scenario would be his full return, a behind-the-scenes return is not the worst case scenario.

- Pia Catton (The Wall Street Journal)

But that’s exactly what Providence St. Mel freshman Jessica Bailey got when Wynton Marsalis visited the West Garfield Park school on Tuesday.

Marsalis spoke to students during a morning assembly, peppering his speech with colorful anecdotes about life and music. “Practice, practice, practice” is what Bailey, an aspiring soprano singer, gleaned from his hour-long speech.

“If you are serious about your craft, if you are serious about your art; if you are serious about whatever you’re doing, you practice,” the 14-year-old said. “It kind of made the phrase ‘Practice makes perfect’ more real to me.”

Surprising advice from the Grammy award winner, who, at first, did not like the trumpet. Marsalis’ first trumpet came when he was six years old as a Christmas gift from a musician who performed with his father, jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis. But the younger Marsalis didn’t take a shine to it right way because he thought trumpet players had “ugly lips” – a turnoff for girls.

“I didn’t see not one trumpet player my whole life whose lips weren’t ugly, and I told my daddy I can’t practice this because they make your lips look ugly,” Marsalis quipped.

His father sternly told him he had no choice but to play the instrument, but his conversion came after he realized girls liked musicians.

“So I said OK. Their lips are ugly, but if the girls like them then I’m going to practice. That’s the truth. I am not lying,” Marsalis said to audience laughs and applause.

Marsalis, 50, has won countless awards during his career, including a Pulitzer Price for Music for Blood on the Fields (1995), an opera about slavery. He admitted his musical chops were not innate, but honed and developed through practice, a task he once considered arduous. And when teachers told him to practice, he thought they really didn’t know how to instruct.

“The teacher that I wanted to study with was going to show me how to get good without practicing,” he said to audience laughter.

But Marsalis soon realized that the more he practiced the better he got. Practicing then became fun.

“Once you’re serious, you’re serious,” he said. “It doesn’t make a difference if you are not doing it to win an award. You are not doing it for somebody to say that you are good. You are doing it just for the love and joy of doing it.”

For that reason Marsalis gave an impromptu demonstration on improvisational jazz, when students asked him how he knew what to play when improvising. Marsalis said improvising is like talking.

“When you’re improvising, you start with an idea and you expand on it just like you’re talking. You can play around with the ideas,” he said.

To illustrate Marsalis tooted the Happy Birthday song on his trumpet, first playing the harmony then speeding up the riffs. Then he slowed it down. Marsalis said the faster pace styling is called Bebop and the slower pace is called New Orleans style jazz.

“It is like when you are playing ball,” Marsalis, an avid basketball player, said. “You know how you take somebody one way and you go back the other way and they’re still over there and you are over here …. That is how it is when you’re playing. There are a lot of ways you can improvise.”

Several St. Mel students who talked with Marsalis described him as very personable. Marsalis often joked with the students during the discussion.

“You felt comfortable around him because of the manner that he carried himself,” said Adam Harris, a 16-year-old junior. “He made it seem like … you were his friend and his was yours.”

Mariah Byrd, 15, was impressed that Marsalis, as accomplished as he is, still wants to learn more. Marsalis talked to students about his wanting to get better on the trumpet and to play with greater clarity.

“By him saying that he wants to do more, learn different cultures and different music, gives me hope that I could be good at what I do…I still learn more,” the freshman said.

Marsalis offered one last piece of advice for the kids-that the world is in their hands.

“The country needs you,” he said. “We are in rough shape, and we need our young people. We need them to look way past us. You have to think up what you want [the world] to be like and you got to make it that way.”

As a member of Weather Report back in the late 1970s, drummer Peter Erskine was working in Los Angeles with Jaco Pastorius on his new album. Lo and behold, there was something going on around the corner. “During the mixing of Word Of Mouth, Jaco decided impulsively one night that we all had to go check out this new trumpet player and his brother [Branford Marsalis] who had just joined Art Blakey’s band,” Erskine recalled. “Jaco and me and my girlfriend plus two or three other folks all piled into a car and drove to some jazz club to hear Wynton. Excited by all that we heard the night before, I told [Joe] Zawinul about the gig that next morning. He told me, ‘Ellis Marsalis and I were very tight, very good friends. We would always hang out together when I would travel to New Orleans with Cannon’s band.’ Joe said, ‘I was the only white musician in an all-black band [with Cannonball Adderley], and Ellis was the only black musician in an all-white band [Al Hirt]. Ellis would always complain about how corny his band was, but how he had to keep doing the gig so he could feed his family. He had a lot of kids. Yeah, I remember Wynton. He was a little kid with glasses.’

“My two favorite things about Wynton,” Erskine continued, “are that, number one, he has a really cool family, and two, he played a huge part in getting the music of Duke Ellington into America’s schools.”

For Graham Haynes, the connection to Marsalis also includes classical music. “When I was at Queens College, I studied to be a jazz and classical trumpet player,” Haynes said. “Around mid-1979 I heard about a guy named Wynton Marsalis who was supposed to be a monster at jazz and classical. I met and heard him around the end of that year and I said to myself, ‘I’ll never be as great as this guy is at both.’ That was the end of my career as a classical trumpet player. I gave up the idea that I could do both. Soon after, we met and talked about several things that we were into, including classical trumpet. What amazed me in addition to his playing was that he sang to me all of the orchestral parts to, I believe, the Haydn Trumpet Concerto.

“Wynton and I didn’t agree on some things, like musical styles. We’ve gone in different directions, but I will always respect his mastery, knowledge and his love and dedication to music.”

Randall Kline, founder and executive artistic director of SFJAZZ, is a fellow music executive who, oddly enough, shares Marsalis’ birthday. Kline says upfront that Wynton’s unstinting support for SFJAZZ is a major reason why the organization is so successful. Like Erskine, his memories of Marsalis go back to the trumpeter’s early days playing with Art Blakey. Apart from his performances with both large and small ensembles at the SFJAZZ Festival, Kline cited another important role Marsalis has played. “I think of Wynton and his connections with young people,” Kline said. “What he’s done to encourage young musicians, he does it naturally. When he’s in San Francisco, there’s always some high school kid backstage who he’s giving a lesson to on the spot. High school all-star bands, middle school programs that exist at SFJAZZ, he’s just off and running with that stuff, teaching and playing with them.”

“My first encounter with Wynton was with him and Branford in New Orleans,” said veteran trumpeter Marcus Belgrave. “It was quite extraordinary because the two of them were able to perform quite well with only a drummer: no chord instrument or bass. I thought this was truly amazing because at the time they were only 14 and 16 years old. They were well-versed in tradition. I raved about them when I returned to Detroit. However, my comments fell on deaf ears with the local DJs until Wynton’s first record won him a Grammy—the rest is history. He has connected us from the 20th to the 21st century with his leadership in the traditions of jazz and the classical American music. His strong opinions and dedication have opened doors for many young people to express themselves and continue the legacy.”

“I’m very appreciative of all the great one-liners Wynton would whisper in my ear while playing on the bandstand with him in 1995–’96,” said bassist Reuben Rogers. “Things like ‘Sound!’ ‘Tone!’ Tempos!’ Makes me crack up just thinking about it. Ultimately, he was pointing out some of the key fundamental things I needed to develop as a young bassist. I can still hear him now.”

“Wynton’s superlative musicianship, leadership skills and unparalleled devotion to promoting the cause of jazz music and African American genius to a general audience needs no comment,” said pianist Aaron Goldberg. “He is prolific and a perfectionist according to his own musical and moral compass, expecting the most of himself and of others—from the musicians in his band all the way up to the federal government. Working with him is a joy and a challenge. Beyond the bandstand, it is an inspirational study in how to work hard, set goals and achieve them. Wynton’s gifts go beyond his uncanny ability to play the trumpet and his unique improvisational voice on his instrument. His greatest talent may be something that is not normally thought of as a talent—the ability to work hard, to apply himself fully, from the smallest details of technique to the largest problems of society. Apparently, without ever needing to sleep.”

Goldberg added, “One particularly underappreciated aspect of Wynton’s character is his psychological acumen, his nuanced ability to read the people around him. Touring with Wynton’s band means also trying to guard his lefty jump shot, hold your own in chess and joust over politics and esthetics, all great pleasures in their own right. I was nevertheless unprepared for one night in his hotel room when in the course of a conversation about Thomas Mann on democracy, Wynton offered insight into my own character that even a professional psychoanalyst would have found startlingly incisive. Wynton applies his formidable intelligence widely, including to the social realm, and he is far more sensitive and generous on a personal level than is commonly known.”

Perhaps speaking for the younger cats who have come up through the ranks and been touched by him over these past couple decades, vibraphonist Stefon Harris effused, “I want to thank you, Wynton, for believing in me and always being a shining example of what is possible when you have a confluence of vision, passion and determination. Your gifts are truly tremendous and plentiful. The most striking among them being your generosity and commitment to America’s greatest cultural contribution to the world. With love, respect and admiration—happy 50th, big brother!”

—John Ephland (Downbeat Magazine)

Share Our Strength

RESTAURANTS:

• Blue Smoke and Jazz Standard – Special: Chicken, Shrimp and Andouille Gumbo (lunch and dinner)
• Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola – Special: Stuffed Mirlitons
• Manresa – Special: Fieldnotes Cocktail; Ketel One Vodka, Love Apple Sorrel, Lemongrass Infusion, Bitter Truth Celery Bitters and Lime
• Little Daddy’s Gumbo Bar – Special: BBQ Oysters served with blue cheese dressing and lemon
• Gumbo Bar – Special: BBQ Oysters served with blue cheese dressing and lemon
• Bayou Bakery – Special: Red Beans & Rice with Garlic Bread (dinner)

Fans in the New Orleans area invited to enjoy a special dish of Shrimp and Mirleton Risotto with Black Truffles created by John Besh at AUGUST to celebrate Wynton Marsalis and support the John Besh Foundation. Proceeds from the special will support Chefs Move!, an initiative that awards a scholarship to a minority student to train at the French Culinary Institute in New York City.

August
John Besh Foundation

Thank you to Our Partners

Radio Stations

We thank the following radio stations for their support of Wynton Marsalis over the years. Tune in to hear special programming featuring Wynton and his music and for opportunities to win the Swinging Into the 21st box set and 5 free songs.

WBGO
WWOZ
WSHA
KUVO
WPFW
TSF Jazz
Ronnie Scotts/JAZZ FM
Sirius XM

Wynton Marsalis turns 50 on October 18 and Live From Lincoln Center, which has featured Wynton and his music on a number of previous programs, will salute his milestone birthday with a special concert celebration, Wynton at 50. Joining him and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on stage will be other luminaries from the world of music and dance, including tap dancer Jared Grimes, vocalist Gregory Porter, pianist Marcus Roberts, violinist Marc O’Connor, Yacub Addy and Odadaa!, and Damien Sneed and Chorale Le Chateau. During intermission, Wynton will be interviewed by actor Wendell Pierce.

Live From Lincoln Center, produced by Lincoln Center’s John Goberman, makes the world’s greatest artists accessible to home viewers in virtually every corner of the United States. It remains the only series of live broadcast performances on American television today. Approximately six major Lincoln Center performances are televised to a national audience of millions each year. In addition to its 13 Emmy Awards and 53 Emmy nominations, Live From Lincoln Center has won two George Foster Peabody Awards, two Grammy Awards, three Monitor Awards, a Television Critics Award and many others.

Live From Lincoln Center is produced by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., in cooperation with Thirteen/WNET in New York. Please visit http://www.lincolncenter.org/ for more information.

Visit Live From Lincoln Center at the PBS Video Portal to view clips, interviews and more from the program.

Marsalis’ second lecture, “The Double Crossing of a Pair of Heels: The Dynamics of Social Dance and American Popular Musics,“ will be accompanied by live performances by acclaimed dance professionals, including Jared Grimes, Nelida Tirado, Eddie Torres Jr., Heather Gehring, and Lou Brockman.

“In this lecture, I will address the dynamic relationship between American music and social dance in our culture,“ Marsalis said. “It will focus on what our dancing and music tells us about our traditions, our sense of community, and our rituals of courtship.“

Marsalis kicked off his lecture series in April before a sold-out house with “Music as Metaphor,“ a two-hour journey through the history of American music that included live musical interludes. Illustrating his gift for combining prose and music with wisdom and humor, Marsalis led the crowd through a narrative that explained the evolution of jazz and the blues, and revealed how American music was vital to the development of the nation’s collective history.

“Wynton Marsalis’ visit to Sanders Theatre last spring was an extraordinary synthesis of performance and spoken word, full of captivating musical moments, but, more than that, wonderfully incisive in exploring music as a metaphor for aspects of contemporary life,“ Harvard President Drew Faust said. “I greatly look forward to welcoming him back.“

Marsalis’ lecture is one of several arts events that will take place throughout the year as Harvard celebrates its 375th anniversary. The Marsalis lecture series highlights the University’s focus on the arts since a 2008 presidential task force called for an increased arts presence.

A native of New Orleans, Marsalis is one of the nation’s most highly decorated cultural figures. In addition to winning nine Grammy awards, he was the first jazz musician to receive the Pulitzer Prize for music. His international accolades include an honorary membership in Britain’s Royal Academy of Music, the highest decoration for a non-British citizen, and the insignia of chevalier of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction. He has more than 70 albums to his credit, which have sold more than 7 million copies. Marsalis is also the first jazz artist to perform and compose across the full spectrum of jazz: from its New Orleans roots to bebop and modern jazz. By creating and performing an expansive range of new music for everything from quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras, and tap dance to ballet, Marsalis has expanded the vocabulary of jazz and created a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers. Harvard awarded him an honorary doctorate in music in 2009.

Tickets for Marsalis’ lecture at Sanders will be free. They will become available for the Harvard community on Sept. 6 and for the public on Sept. 8. Information on obtaining tickets can be found at http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice/

Featuring unique elements including behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage and special performances, Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues on Wednesday, September 7th at 7:30PM (local time) in select movie theaters nationwide is an event you won’t want to miss!
Learn more here: http://www.fathomevents.com/concerts/event/marsalis_clapton.aspx

Available September 13 On CD And CD/DVD

New York City’s premier jazz venue got the blues last April when Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton performed together in Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center for two sold-out shows dedicated to vintage blues. The extraordinary collaboration, billed as Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues, paired these musical virtuosos with members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as they brought to life a repertoire of songs selected by Clapton and arranged by Marsalis.

Reprise Records captures the magic of these unprecedented shows from earlier this year on CD and as a CD/DVD combo that both feature selections taken from the two public concerts (April 8-9), as well a special performance for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s annual gala (April 7).
Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton PLAY THE BLUES – LIVE FROM JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER will be available September 13 at physical and digital retail outlets for suggested list prices of $18.98 (CD), $24.98 (CD/DVD) and $9.99 (digital ““ audio only).
The DVD will also feature a bonus performance of the classic “Stagger Lee“ from legendary bluesman Taj Mahal’s opening solo set for these special shows.

Marsalis, Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and nine-time Grammy® Award winner, writes about his collaboration with Clapton, a 19-time Grammy recipient, in the album’s liner notes: “…we wanted these concerts to sound like people playing music they know and love, not like a project.“

To help them achieve that level of devotion, Marsalis and Clapton were joined on stage by Dan Nimmer (piano), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Ali Jackson (drums), Marcus Printup (trumpet), Victor Goines (clarinet), Chris Crenshaw (trombone, vocals), Don Vappie (banjo) and Clapton’s longtime keyboarist/sideman Chris Stainton. Marsalis says the group combined the sound of an early blues jump-band with the sound of New Orleans jazz to accommodate the integration of guitar/trumpet lead, a combination that gave the musicians the latitude to play different grooves, from the Delta to the Caribbean and beyond.

The band nimbly navigated a diverse set list that touched on different styles, from the four-on-the-floor swing of Louis Armstrong’s “Ice Cream“ and the southern slow-drag of W.C. Handy’s “Joe Turner’s Blues“ to the traveling blues of “Joliet Bound“ and the boogie-woogie jump of “Kidman Blues.“ After opening the shows with his solo set, Mahal returned to join the band on “Corrine, Corrina“ and the New Orleans funeral standard “Just A Closer Walk With Thee.“

The one song not selected by Clapton for the show was his own “Layla,“ which was requested by bassist Henriquez and arranged as a Crescent City dirge to tremendous results. On his review of the performance, David Fricke of Rolling Stone wrote: “In the [song’s] instrumental break, Clapton hit a series of stabbing licks lightly crusted with distortion, followed by Marsalis’ slow parade of clean hurting peals ““ a moving dialogue in lovesickness and blues routes.“

For more information about Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton PLAY THE BLUES – LIVE FROM JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER, please contact Jason Elzy in Rhino Entertainment’s Media Relations Department at (818) 238-6220 or jason.elzy@rhino.com or Kristen Foster at (212) 582-1111 or Kristen.Foster@pmkbnc.com

Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton PLAY THE BLUES ““ LIVE FROM JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER
CD and DVD Track Listing

- Ice Cream – Forty-Four
- Joe Turner’s Blues – The Last Time – Careless Love – Kidman Blues – Layla – Joliet Bound – Just A Closer Walk With Thee ““ feat. Taj Mahal – Corrine, Corrina ““ feat. Taj Majal

Bonus track on DVD only: “Stagger Lee“ by Taj Majal

Free download of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis performing Wynton’s composition “Sanctified Blues“ from Congo Square during their Cuban tour, a sneak preview from the JLCO’s upcoming CD “Five Nights In Havana“, coming out in 2012.

60 Minutes – Wynton Marsalis with JLCO in Cuba (Part I)

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) is featured throughout both segments. In 1988 Wynton formed the JLCO by combining the members of his Septet with former members of the Duke Ellington Orchestra . Learn more about the current JLCO.

00:46 The JLCO is performing “Things to Come“ ““ composed by Dizzy Gillespie arranged by Gil Fuller

02:46 Wynton is standing in Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center ““ Learn more about “The House of Swing“ – The Emmy winning “Spirit of New Orleans“ was filmed with Wynton in this hall. Watch the video

03:26 Wynton Marsalis Quintet is rehearsing the “Razor Rim“ in London. “Razor Rim” is from the album “He and She“

03:40 Ed Bradley Interview – Watch the full 60 minutes profile with Ed Bradley.

04:12 Wynton is playing his composition: Spring Yaounde Watch the full performance from Cuba – Wynton first recorded “Spring Yaounde“ on his Septet album Citi Movement

05:10 Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra ““ check out the bios of all members.

06:02 “Louis“ a silent film is mentioned. In August 2010, Wynton traveled around the US performing his music for a silent film by Dan Pritzker based on the childhood of Louis Armstrong. Learn more at the official website

06:22 Wynton has logged over 3,000,000 miles on the road in his career. Check out all of the cities he’s performed.

07:12 Eric Clapton ““ In April 2011 Eric Clapton joined Wynton at Jazz at Lincoln Center for three concerts focused on the blues. This collaboration was recorded and an album is scheduled to be released in the Fall of 2011 Lean more here

07:05 Barbican Residency ““ In June, 2010 Jazz at Lincoln Center had a performance and education residency at the Barbican. To learn more click here

08:00 The JLCO performs New Orleans Bump – Wynton first recorded Jelly Roll Morton’s piece on his album: Mr. Jelly Lord Standard Time Vol. 6

08:32 The JLCO is performing Benny Carter’s Symphony in Riffs ““ A few years ago Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Educational program Essentially Ellington provided 1,525 charts of “Symphony in Riffs“ to high schools around the country.

08:58 Duke piece“¦ Duke ““ Centennial JALC

09:40 The JLCO is performing Thelonious Monk’s “˜Round Midnight arranged by Dizzy Gillespie

10:14 Wynton’s Swing Symphony is featured ““ Watch the world premiere of “Swing Symphony“ with the Berlin Philharmonic through the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall

10:45 Wynton starts a discussion with Morley Safer about US Culture and Education – Watch his 2009 speech “Ballad of American Arts“

11:04 Essentially Ellington is featured ““ Learn about JALC’s educational initiatives

60 Minutes – Wynton Marsalis with JLCO in Cuba (Part II)

01:37 Second Line ““ video of Congo Square in New Orleans

01:57 The song featured is: 2 3’s Adventure composed by JLCO bassist Carlos Henriquez

03:52 Chucho Valdes is featured. Read more about Chucho Valdes and JALC’s cultural exchange

04:30 Ted Nash is soloing on Shade of Jade by Joe Henderson arr. Carlos Henriquez

05:44 Wynton visits a school. Learn more about Wynton’s Education initiative

08:58 The JLCO is rehearsing Nueva Orleans composed by Chucho Valdes. Chucho wrote this song in honor of the Marsalis family. Check out his latest album

10:12 Wynton is playing “Embraceable You“ With Chucho Valdes. – Watch Wynton and Chucho perform “Embraceable You“ live in Havana. Wynton’s recorded “Embraceable You a few times“ here’s one from “Live at the Village Vanguard“

11:48 “Music transcends, we create community.” Read more about Wynton’s thoughts on the relationship between jazz and everyday life in his book – Moving to Higher Ground “ How Jazz Can Change Your Life“. No prior jazz knowledge needed to read!

12:02 Second Line through Havana: in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina Wynton took the JLCO and Yacub Addy and Odadda! To New Orleans to perform his composition “Congo Square”. Check out this street video from when the band second lined throughout the neighborhoods of New Orleans.

Competition Webcast Available Monday, May 16

1st Place:
Dillard Center for the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL

2nd Place:
Roosevelt High School, Seattle, WA

3rd Place:
Mountlake Terrace High School, Seattle, WAHonorable Mention:New World School of the Arts, Miami, FL

Honorable Mention:
New World School of the Arts, Miami, FL

Three high school jazz bands took top honors tonight in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 16th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival. Each band was chosen by a panel of judges composed of distinguished jazz musiciansand historians- Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Artistic Director WYNTON MARSALIS; composer, conductor, and Ellington authority DAVID BERGER; composer and arranger RICH DEROSA; trombonist, educator, and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra member VINCENT GARDNER, and drummer and big band leader JEFF HAMILTON- from among the 15 finalist bands that came to the Competition & Festival in New York City. Competition performances of all the bands were streamed live and can be seen at jalc.org/essentiallyellington from Monday, May 16th through Saturday, May 21st.

Essentially Ellington culminated at tonight’s concert, where the top placing bands performed with Wynton Marsalis as a soloist followed by a performance by the 15-piece Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (JLCO) -all of whom served as mentors for each of the finalist bands during this weekend’s festival. The JLCO’s performance included pieces by Duke Ellington plus music composed by Dizzy Gillespie which will be distributed by Jazz at Lincoln Center for the 2011-12 Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Program.

At the awards ceremony, Wynton Marsalis presented prizes and cash awards to each of the 15 finalist bands. Christopher Dorsey, Director of the Dillard Center for the Arts Jazz Ensemble, accepted the 1st place trophy and an award of $5,000. Scott Brown, Director of Roosevelt Jazz Bandaccepted the 2nd place trophy and an award of $2,500.Darin Faul, Director of Mountlake Terrace High School Jazz Ensemble I accepted the 3rd place trophy and an award of $1,000. New World School of the Arts Jazz Ensemble was named honorable mention band and received an award of $750. The remaining 11 finalist bands and winning community ensemble were awarded certificates of merit and cash awards of $500. All monetary awards go toward improving schools’ jazz programs. Awards for outstanding soloists and sections were also presented (see listing below).

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 16th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival 2011 Awards

FIRST PLACE
Dillard Center for the Arts

SECOND PLACE
Roosevelt High School

THIRD PLACE
Mountlake Terrace High School

HONORABLE MENTION BAND
New World School of the Arts

WINNING COMMUNITY ENSEMBLE
American Music Program Pacific Crest Jazz Orchestra

OUTSTANDING SOLOISTS

On Clarinet
Honorable Mention Clarinet:
Matt Choi, Agoura High School

Outstanding Clarinet:
Adam Harris, Hall High School

On Alto Saxophone
Honorable Mention Alto Saxophone:
Kama Bell, American Music Program
Harvey Xia, Wellesley High School
Kristjan Joseph, River East Collegiate
Jorge Roldan, New World School of the Arts
Dara Karbasioon, Agoura High School
Julia Brummel, Sun Prairie High School

Outstanding Alto Saxophone:
Carlos Brown, East St. Louis High School
David Leon, New World School of the Arts
Ian Mengedoht, Roosevelt High School
Carlie Jansen, Agoura High School
Patrick Bartley, Dillard Center for the Arts

On Tenor Saxophone
Outstanding Tenor Saxophone:
Aaron Reihs, American Music Program
Xavier Del Castillo, Roosevelt High School
Adrian Noteboom, Roosevelt High School
Rane Roatta, New World School of the Arts
Forest Jackson, Mountlake Terrace High School
Anthony Burrel, Dillard Center for the Arts

Outstanding Doubler – on Tenor and Clarinet
Matt Kampe, Hall High School
Jared Giunta, Valley High School

Outstanding Tripler – on Tenor, Alto, and Clarinet
Brendan Thomas, Foxboro High School
Jack Walters, Mountlake Terrace High School

On Trumpet
Honorable Mention Trumpet:Frankie Hanson, Sun Prairie High School
Dan Weinreb, Hall High School

Outstanding Trumpet:
Colin Didier, St. Charles North High School
Clark Davis, Wellesley High School
Brady Lewis, East St. Louis High School
Nick Conkle, Roosevelt High School
Taylor Call, Mountlake Terrace High School
Skyler Floe, Mountlake Terrace High School
Max Boiko, Dillard Center for the Arts
Noah Conrad, American Music Program
Austin Casey, American Music Program
Benjamin Seacrest, American Music Program

On Trombone
Honorable Mention Trombone:
Reid Isaak, River East Collegiate
Kirby Fellis, Dillard Center for the Arts

Outstanding Trombone:
Alex Stenzel, Valley High School
Andrew Karboski, Roosevelt High School
Ashton Summers, American Music Program
Ian Garner, American Music Program
Paul Atwood, Temple High School
Thomas Dover, New World School of the Arts
Kendall Irby, Mountlake Terrace High School
Christopher Dorsey II, Dillard Center for the Arts
Brandon Russel, Agoura High School

On French Horn
Outstanding French Horn:
Stewart Nadurak, River East Collegiate

On Piano
Honorable Mention Piano:
Terrion Peete, East St. Louis High School
Sarah Nunes, Hall High School
Ian Williams, Downers Grove High School
Daryl Jones, Dillard Center for the Arts
Ajay Narayanan, Temple High School

Outstanding Piano:
Jon Nelson, Sun Prairie High School
Paul Buser, Wellesley High School
Kenneth Tham, River East Collegiate
Chris McCarthy, Roosevelt High School
Alex Olsen, Foxboro High School

On Bass
Honorable Mention Bass:
Cole Ridd, River East Collegiate
Andrada Pteanc, Downers Grove High School
Julia Woods, Downers Grove High School
Connor Schulz, Foxboro High School

Outstanding Bass:
Russell Hall, Dillard Center for the Arts

On Drums
Outstanding Drums:
Nick Kula, River East Collegiate

On Vibraphone
Outstanding Vibraphone:
Matt Dibiase, Wellesley High School

On Vocals
Honorable Mention Vocalist:
Eric Reiman, Roosevelt High School

Outstanding Vocalist:
Katherine Stuber, Roosevelt High School

On Guitar
Outstanding Guitar:
Harley Basadre, New World School of the Arts
Kevin Scollins, Foxboro High School

Outstanding Rhythm Guitar:
Armando Zamora, Dillard Center for the Arts

The Ella Fitzgerald Outstanding Soloist Award:
Tony Madruga, New World School of the Arts

OUTSTANDING SECTIONS

Reeds
Honorable Mention Reeds:
Agoura High School

Outstanding Reeds:
Roosevelt High School
Foxboro High School
Dillard Center for the Arts

Brass
Outstanding Brass:
Hall High School

Trombones
Outstanding Trombones:
American Music Program
Wellesley High School
Temple High School
Valley High School
Roosevelt High School
Mountlake Terrace High School

Trumpets
Outstanding Trumpets:
Sun Prairie High School
American Music Program
Roosevelt High School
Rhythm Section
Honorable Mention

Rhythm Section:
River East Collegiate

Outstanding Rhythm Section:
Roosevelt High School
Foxboro High School
New World School of the Arts
Dillard Center for the Arts
Mountlake Terrace High School
Roosevelt High School (two complete sections)

In addition, Jazz at Lincoln Center recognized the winner of the tenth Essentially Ellington Writing Contest. The contest invited students from all participating high schools to submit a nonfiction personal essay or fictional short story based on interpretations of the stories jazz musicians tell with their music. Jazz at Lincoln Center received over 60 submissions from which Jazz at Lincoln Center staff and Robert G. O’Meally, Ph.D., Founding Director of the Center for Jazz Studies and Zora Neale Hurston Professor for English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, chose the winners. As a member of Foxboro High School’s band, Brendan Thomas was in attendance at the Competition & Festival. His outstanding work was recognized at the Final Concert and Awards Ceremony. In addition, Thomas’ winning essay, was printed in the Festival playbill and a seat in Rose Theater will be engraved in his honor.

For more information on the annual Essentially Ellington Student Writing Contest and to read the winning essay visit: jalc.org/essentiallyellington

After a three-day Competition & Festival, May 12, 13, & 14, 2011 at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, honors were announced during the Final Concert & Awards Ceremony that took place May 14 at Avery Fisher Hall.
How: A photo gallery of the entire Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival and recordings of the competition performances will be available in upcoming weeks on jalc.org/essentiallyellington.

Background/Statistics:
2011 COMPETITION & FESTIVAL WEEKEND

The three-day festival began on Thursday, May 12 when the finalist bands arrived at Frederick P. Rose Hall for a “One-On-One With Wynton Marsalis,” workshops, rehearsals, a banquet dinner, and jam sessions with members of the JLCO. On Friday, May 13, the winning community ensemble performed at 2:30pm followed by the first of three Competition parts, which were webcast live for the first time in the history of the program. The Competition, where each band’s performance of three Ellington and/or Basie works was judged by a panel of judges, continued on Saturday, May 14 at 10am and 1pm. At the May 14th, 7:30pm Concert and Awards Ceremony in Avery Fisher Hall, the three top-placing bands each performed pieces, one with Wynton Marsalis as a guest soloist, followed by a JLCO performance of Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie repertoire.

The concert ended with the culminating awards ceremony honoring outstanding soloists and sections and the three top-placing bands. In addition to repertoire by Ellington, the 2011-12 Essentially Ellington season is the first time in the history of the program that repertoire composed by Dizzy Gillespie will be included in the program. Repertoire includes, Duke Ellington’s “Riding On a Blue Note,” “Sepia Panorama,” and from The Queen’s Suite, “Sunset and The Mocking Bird,” and Dizzy Gillespie’s, “Night in Tunisia,” “Oop Bop Sh’Bam,” and “Things To Come.”

PROGRAM OVERVIEW
Each year, Jazz at Lincoln Center selects and transcribes original transcriptions of Duke Ellington compositions and arrangements by other seminal big band arrangers and composers. The six selections for 2010-11 included music composed for the Count Basie Orchestra, “Every Day I Have the Blues,” “Swingin’ The Blues,” and “Tippin’ on the Q.T.” and by Duke Ellington, “Harlem Speaks,” “Portrait of Mahalia Jackson” from the New Orleans Suite plus “Prelude to a Kiss” composed by Ellington and arranged by Billy Strayhorn.

The music along with reference recordings and other resources were distributed to all high school jazz bands that joined the free program.

Throughout April, Jazz at Lincoln Center sent, free of charge, a professional musician to each of the 15 finalist schools and community ensemble winner to lead an intensive workshop of rehearsals, lessons, and master classes.

The free clinics are part of the rich 16-year history of this unique music education program, which has reached more than 300,000 students in more than 3,000 high schools across all 50 U.S. states, Canada, Australia and American schools abroad. EE has produced and distributed more than 96,000 copies of 92 previously unavailable scores and 222 finalist bands have traveled to New York City to participate in the annual Competition & Festival.

• This year Jazz at Lincoln Center distributed more than 9,200 newly transcribed scores, reference recordings and additional educational materials.
• 1,536 high schoolsin the United States, Canada, and American schools in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, and Switzerland received Essentially Ellington materials.
• 110 bands enteredthe competition by submitting a recorded performance of three compositions.
• The entrieswere evaluated in a blind screening by jazz education experts RONALD CARTER, ANDREW HOMZY, LOREN SCHOENBERG, and TODD WILLIAMS.
• 15 finalists and one community ensemble were selected.
• The Competition was webcast live for the first time. All sixteen performances can be viewed from Monday, May 16th until Saturday, May 21st at jalc.org/essentiallyellington

The 15 finalists for Essentially Ellington 2011 were:

Agoura High School, Agoura Hills, CA
William H. Hall High School, West Hartford, CT
Dillard Center for the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL
New World School of the Arts, Miami, FL
Valley High School, West Des Moines, IA
Downers Grove South High School, Downers Grove, IL
East St. Louis High School, East St. Louis, IL
St. Charles North High School, St. Charles, IL
Foxboro High School, Foxboro, MA
Wellesley High School, Wellesley, MARiver East Collegiate, Winnipeg, MB
Temple High School, Temple, TX
Mountlake Terrace High School, Mountlake Terrace, WA
Roosevelt High School, Seattle, WA
Sun Prairie High School, Sun Prairie, WI
Winner of Community Band Category:
American Music Program Pacific Crest Jazz Orchestra, Portland, OR

Included in the winners was Wynton Marsalis’ “The Spirit of New Orleans“ for Super Bowl XLIV

Outstanding SHORT FEATURE

NFL on CBS “‘ Super Bowl XLIV – CBS
Wynton Marsalis “‘ ’43 Years’

Executive Producers
Harold Bryant, Sean McManus

Coordinating Producer
Stephen Karasik

Senior Producer
Eric Mann

Producers
Wynton Marsalis, Sarah Rinaldi

Associate Producers
Justin Martin, Fred McGraw, Jason Thompson

The full score, written in concert pitch, is also available independent of the parts for students of arranging

Pulitzer-prize winning jazzman Wynton Marsalis considers himself both student and teacher of music, which is why it comes as no surprise that his newest undertaking is a two-year lecture series at Harvard University.

Beginning on April 28, Marsalis will lecture and perform a class entitled “Music as Metaphor.“ The nine-time Grammy award winner currently serves as the artistic director for Jazz at Lincoln Center, a role he will keep throughout the lecture series. Speakeasy talked with Marsalis about the coming series, his love of last-minute pressures and the concept of improvisation.

Is every lecture in the series already planned?

It’s all planned. I haven’t written them but know what they are going to be. I generally work right up to when I have to do something ““ I’m always doing a lot. My schedule is always tight. But I like to have the pressure of having to finish doing something; it gives me an added edge. It’s like the difference between a studio recording and a live recording ““ there’s more pressure ““ more excitement and edge, which is very seldom, if ever, created in a studio environment.

How far along are you on your first lecture, which is ten days away?

I’ve got what music I’m going to play and all materials and all basic ideas. I write little parts of it as I go along. At this point I’m working on it all day. Generally when I wake up in the morning I set out a series of problems for myself and I write them down and when I’m sleeping my mind solves the problems. When I wake up in the morning I have more clarity on the issue.

The premise of your lecture is the relationship between American music and the American identity and geography. What does that entail?

The fundamentals of American music. I feel that for years of teaching in the country and reading criticism in books, I feel like the things most needed in our culture are the understanding of the meanings of our music. We haven’t done that good of job teaching our kids what our music means or how we developed our taste in music that reminds us and teaches us who we are. Most of my lectures will be on meaning in American music. What does it mean? What are the component parts of it and how does it tie in to our way of life?

Are you nervous?

It’s much harder to play a trumpet that to talk. An instrument poses a difficultly. Whatever that barrier is ““ it doesn’t exist with speaking. With an instrument you have to concentrate on execution on and through your instrument. But I talk all the time, the voice is what it is.

Will the students have to attend each lecture to understand the message or will each class stand on its own?

Each will stand on its own but they will all be together like a train. As a matter of fact that’s part of what I’m talking about. The chorus format form which is we use when we improvise. It’s called a chorus format. You play one chorus after another chorus after another chorus and the choruses allow you to play a variation upon the harmonic form. In that way it’s like a train. It could be two cars, could be engine and a caboose it can also be an engine, 25 cars and a caboose. Those 25 cars are their own cars, some are short some are long, some are tubular, some carry grain ““ and you can look at the different cars ““ each has a different function.

Earlier this month you played the blues with Eric Clapton. Now you are planning a series of lectures for Harvard. How do you juggle so many projects?

I don’t do projects; it’s all one thing to me. Things that Eric Clapton and I talk about are the same things talking about in these lectures. Blues, regional grooves, function rhythm guitar; it’s talking about things in our craft and dealing with our music and playing.

source: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/04/18/wynton-marsalis-goes-to-harvard/

One of the world’s premier jazz celebrations located in the historic Basque region of northern Spain, the Vitoria-Gasteiz Jazz Festival is celebrating its 35th year…and we want to give you and a guest the chance to be there in person to see an incredible lineup of legendary musicians. Performers scheduled to appear at this year’s Festival include Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter & Marcus Miller; Jamie Cullum, Trombone Shorty, Ruben Blades, Nigel Kennedy and many more.

Inspired in part by the inter-cultural collaborations at the Vitoria-Gasteiz Jazz Festival, Wynton Marsalis, the Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, recently composed the Vitoria Suite. This extended work uses the impulse of the blues as a foundation to jointly explore the music of two worlds and two cultures: the jazz and blues of North America and the indigenous music of the Basque region and flamenco of Spain. Performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and special guests Chano Dominguez and legendary flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia, Vitoria Suite was released on CD last year to wide acclaim and was recently performed in concert by Wynton and the JLCO. SiriusXM’s Real Jazz channel will present an encore broadcast of this memorable performance during its special Jazz Appreciation Month programming in April.

One lucky winner will receive round-trip airfare for two to Vitoria, Spain, ground transportation to and from the airport, hotel accommodations for seven nights (including breakfast), two VIP passes for the 2011 Vitoria-Gasteiz Jazz Festival, and a copy of the Vitoria Suite CD (two-disc set plus bonus “Making Of“ DVD) signed by Wynton Marsalis.

*Winner must be a US citizen at least 21 years of age and able to travel to Spain July 10-17, 2011.

Photo Credit: Frank Stewart

No Purchase Necessary To Enter or Win. A purchase will not increase your chances of winning.

Void where prohibited. U.S. Law Governs. Open only to legal residents of the contiguous United States, and the District of Columbia, 21 and older at time of entry.

ENTER online only from NOON EST 4/5/11 to 5PM EST 4/29/11. See Official Rules.

This was not the first time both musicians have performed the blues together. “It was the blues that brought us together because we had played a blues benefit (the Jazz at Lincoln Center gala at the Apollo Theatre) with Ray Charles and B.B. King. We both came up in the tradition, but we embraced the blues from different vantage points,“ said Marsalis. Marsalis also played on Clapton’s 2010 album, Clapton, a record largely devoted to vintage jazz and blues covers.

In his introductory remarks at the first show, Marsalis spoke of Clapton’s vast knowledge of music. Clapton, in turn, sang and soloed like a team player. In the opening number, “Ice Cream,” Clapton locked into a rapid-fire strum with banjo player Don Vappie. Clapton complemented Victor Goines’ crying-clarinet break in W.C. Handy’s slow march “Joe Turner’s Blues” with a chorus of deep long-sob notes. And in a version of Bessie Smith’s 1925 recording “Careless Love,” Clapton coursed through the brass and rhythm tumult with curt phrases in a dirty country-blues tone.

Marsalis told the audience that the show was a celebration of “the international power of the blues.” For Clapton, it was more like homecoming. At one point in the evening, he paused to reminisce: “I used to say to all the bluesmen I met, ‘I’m just doing this until I get a gig with a jazz band.’”

Sharing the stage with Marsalis and Clapton were: Marcus Printup (trumpet), Chris Crenshaw (trombone), Victor Goines (clarinet), Dan Nimmer (piano), Chris Stainton (keyboards), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Ali Jackson (drums) and Don Vappie (banjo). Taj Mahal was the special guest.

The gala performance on Thursday evening raised $3.6 million dollars for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s performance, education and broadcast events. The Thursday and Friday concerts were filmed for DVD.

Set List – Saturday, April 9th

Ice Cream (Howard Johnson / Robert King / Billy Moll)
Forty-Four (Chester Burnett)
Joe Turner’s Blues (W.C. Handy)
The Last Time (Bill Ewing / Sara Martin)
Careless Love (W.C. Handy / Martha E. Koenig / Spencer Williams)
Kidman Blues (Big Maceo Merriweather)
Layla (Eric Clapton / Jim Gordon)
Joliet Bound (Kansas Joe McCoy / Memphis Minnie McCoy)
Just A Closer Walk With Thee (Traditional)
Corrine Corrina (Bo Chatman / Mitchell Parish / J. Mayo Williams) – encore
All arrangements by Wynton Marsalis

Reviews
New York Times
EW
Chicago Tribune
Washington Post
Huffington Post
RollingStone

Harvard University announced today that Wynton Marsalis will launch a two-year performance and lecture series on April 28, with an appearance at Sanders Theater. Currently the Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Marsalis is an accomplished musician, composer, bandleader and educator who has made the promotion of jazz and cultural literacy his hallmark causes.

“Wynton Marsalis is both an internationally acclaimed musician and a leader in educating people about the importance of arts and culture,“ Harvard President Drew Faust said. “We are fortunate to have an artist and performer of his caliber on campus to enhance the University’s vibrant arts scene and engage our students, staff and faculty.“

Throughout the ages, artists have been truth tellers for civilization; they speak about the essence of their society in ways that others cannot or will not. Marsalis will visit campus several times, for two to three days at a time, over the next two years, lecturing on a variety of topics to illuminate the relationship between American music and the American identity. His talks will be punctuated with performances by dancers, Marsalis’ quintet and other ensembles, including a New Orleans parade band and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

His lecture performance on April 28 is entitled Music as Metaphor and will feature Ali Jackson (drums), Dan Nimmer (piano), Walter Blanding Jr. (tenor sax), Carlos Henriquez (bass), James Chirillo (guitar and banjo) and Mark O’Connor (violin). The following day, Marsalis will teach a master class to high school musicians at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School.

Marsalis’ appointment is the latest example of the University’s closer embrace of the arts since a presidential task force called in 2008 for a concerted effort to increase the presence of the arts on campus.

“I am delighted that Harvard has recognized the need to make cultural literacy an integral part of its curriculum,“ Marsalis said. “I hope that other institutions will follow suit to foster a deeper appreciation among all Americans for the democratic victory of our cultural legacy.“

Since 2008, there has been a renewed focus on bringing prominent artists to campus who can engage students and the wider community in the kind of imaginative and innovative thinking that is central to the cognitive life of the University. For example, renowned large-scale artist Krzysztof Wodiczko now teaches at the Harvard Design School, while this semester Tony-nominated director Diane Paulus, Artistic Director for the Harvard University American Repertory Theater, is teaching “Porgy and Bess: Performance in Context“ at Harvard College. Last year, Harvard announced that the Silk Road Project, founded by renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, would move its headquarters to Harvard. And this fall, renowned choreographer Liz Lerman, MacArthur grant recipient and founder of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, will be a Visiting Lecturer in residence at Harvard.

A native of New Orleans, Marsalis is one of America’s most highly decorated cultural figures. In addition to nine Grammy awards, he was the first jazz musician awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. His numerous international accolades include: an Honorary Membership in Britain’s Royal Academy of Music, the highest decoration for a non-British citizen, and the insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction. He has more than 70 albums to his credit, which have sold more than 7 million copies worldwide. Wynton Marsalis is also the world’s first jazz artist to perform and compose across the full spectrum of jazz: from its New Orleans roots to bebop and modern jazz. By creating and performing an expansive range of brilliant new music for quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras, and tap dance to ballet, Marsalis has expanded the vocabulary of jazz and created a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers. Harvard awarded him an honorary doctorate in music in 2009.

Tickets for Marsalis’ lecture performance at Sanders Theater will be free of charge, and will become available for the Harvard community on Tuesday, April 12, and to the general public on Thursday, April 14.
Information on obtaining tickets can be found at http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice/

On Monday, April 4, get first crack at the best seats by using promo code WYNTON to purchase tickets before they go on sale to the general public.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on Tuesday, April 5.
USE PROMO CODE: WYNTON
Pre-sale starts Monday, April 4 at 10:00am & ends Tuesday, April 5 at 9:00am.

“EARLY BIRD” DISCOUNTS FOR FORT ADAMS STATE PARK
$10 off general admission tickets by buying on-line with promo code WYNTON by Friday, April 9
Single-Day Tickets: $59* for either August 6 or 7 (regularly $69)
Two-Day Packages: $118* for August 6 & 7 (regularly $125) *Service charges apply.

USE PROMO CODE: WYNTON
Offer expires on Friday, April 15!

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS AND USE PROMO CODE: WYNTON

The first piece from the Wynton Marsalis Big Band collection is now available for purchase and instant download.

The Caboose is the final song from the larger work called Big Train. It’s a traditional big band instrumentation of 2 Alto Sax, 2 Tenor Sax, 1 Baritone Sax, 4 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, Piano, Bass and Drums. A 3/4 groove plays throughout the piece, while melodically the piece alternates from a variety of train sounds to rich sax solis. This is the music exactly as it is recorded on the CD. The full score, written in concert pitch, is also available independent of the parts for students of arranging.

We’ll be adding more big band pieces for sale in the near future. Check back frequently for new titles.

On Wednesday, March 23rd the Quintet will perform at EN Japanese Brasserie‘s fundraiser in support of the Japanese Society’s Earthquake Relief Fund & the Japanese Red Cross in New York City.

Please join us, 100% of the proceeds will be donated. For tickets please call 212.647.9196

New York City Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Leach, right, watching agents pour liquor into sewer following a raid, ca. 1921. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division.

Prohibition & The Jazz Age
Ken Burns Introduces Excerpts From His Latest Film “Prohibition”
With Special Live Performance By The Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis And Guests Vince Giordano And Doug Wamble.
May 5, 6, 7

Wynton Marsalis and Ken Burns continue their long time artistic collaboration on “Prohibition,” a three-part documentary directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. “Prohibition” tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The upcoming film series features original compositions and arrangements by Marsalis and others.

At this special Jazz at Lincoln Center concert event, Ken Burns will present video excerpts from “Prohibition” accompanied by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and guests Vince Giordano and Doug Wamble performing music from the film and from the Prohibition era (also known as the “Jazz Age”). Through this multimedia experience, the audience will be transported to a time when America learned to swing to the sounds of Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, and Jelly Roll Morton – in the culture created by prohibition.

Burns’s and Marsalis’s collaborative efforts span over a decade. Marsalis was Senior Creative Consultant on Burns’ film “JAZZ” (2000) and Soundtrack Composer and Performer on “Unforgivable Blackness” (2005) and on “War,” (2007) directed by Burns and Novick.

The “Prohibition & The Jazz Age” concert is part of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jazz Age Celebration events. For more information, go to jalc.org.

“Prohibition” will air on PBS in Fall, 2011.

When: May 5-7, 2011 at 8pm

Where: Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street, New York, New York.

Ticket prices are $10, $30, $50, $75, $95 or $120 dependent upon seating section.

Note: Hot Seats, $10 orchestra seats for each Rose Theater performance (excluding Jazz For Young People concerts), are available for purchase to the general public on the Wednesday of each performance week. Subject to availability. Hot Seats are available only by walk up at the Box Office, maximum of four per person.

All tickets can be purchased through jalc.org or CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 9am to 9pm. Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, ground floor. Box Office hours: Monday-Saturday from 10am to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain) and Sunday from noon to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain).

Jazz at Lincoln Center proudly acknowledges its major corporate partners: Brooks Brothers, Centric, The Coca-Cola Company, Con Edison, Related, Entergy, Bloomberg, SiriusXM.

MasterCard is the preferred card of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The Berliner Philharmoniker also just released the HD video of our June 2010 performance of “Swing Symphony.” It features a dance choreographed by Rhys Martin which was performed live by hundreds of Berlin school children. You can check it out for free in their digital concert hall.

Jazz at Lincoln Center and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis announce the programming for the 2011-12 season – the organization’s 25th season and eighth in its home, Frederick P. Rose Hall. In this new season of concerts, education events, touring, and a diverse line-up of guest artists, Jazz at Lincoln Center celebrates milestones in jazz: the 50th anniversary of Impulse Records, birthdays of living legends Jimmy Heath, Jon Hendricks, Wynton Marsalis; and the music of Cachao, Nat King Cole, Jelly Roll Morton, Astor Piazzolla, and Frank Sinatra.

The 2011-12 season also ushers in the new Blues series in The Allen Room featuring Taj Mahal and guest artists.

“This season we’re looking forward to expanding the circle of feeling and the tradition of warmth, participation and the excitement that has come to define the House of Swing,” said Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

“It’s an honor to start the season with legendary jazz musicians like Jimmy Heath and Jon Hendricks, as well as Wayne Shorter, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Herbie Hancock and others joining us throughout the year, “ said Adrian Ellis, Executive Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. “We continue to expand our offerings through the roots of jazz and are thrilled to have Taj Mahal curate a new blues series. As always our mission is to entertain and expand audiences for the art form of jazz – and this season definitely has something for everyone.”

Highlights of the 2011-12 season include:

• OPENING NIGHT: An Evening with Jimmy Heath and Jon Hendricks.
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra concerts include The Music of Cachao, Stan Kenton Centennial with guests Bill Holman and Lee Konitz, new arrangements of Big Band Hits and new works by JLCO members Chris Crenshaw, Sherman Irby, and Wynton Marsalis.
• New Blues Series in The Allen Room featuring Taj Mahal, Shemekia Copeland, John Hammond, John Mayall.
• Wynton Marsalis at 50 features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performing a retrospective of big band music by Marsalis.
• Herbie Hancock, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter Quartet lead concerts in Rose Theater.
• Catherine Russell, Luciana Souza, Nikki Yanofsky lead concerts in The Allen Room.
• Impulse Records at 50 anniversary concert features Eric Reed Ensemble, and Reggie Workman’s AALP performs selections from John Coltrane’s Africa Brass sessions.
• New Orleans Celebration includes Music of Jelly Roll Morton performed by Marcus Roberts and New Orleans Piano Kings featuring Jon Batiste, Henry Butler, Ellis Marsalis.
• Music of Astor Piazzolla performed by Paquito d’Rivera, Anthony Madruga and Pipi Piazzolla. Music of Frank Sinatra & Nat King Cole performed by Monty Alexander. Music of The Tenor Masters featuring Joe Lovano, Benny Golson and Bennie Maupin.
• Jazz Meets Flamenco with Doug Wamble and Nino Josele.
• New Holiday Revue features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and vocalist Kim Burrell performing new arrangements of holiday classics.
• Jazz & Popular Song series, curated by Michael Feinstein, returns to The Allen Room.
• Season guest performers include Toshiko Akiyoshi, Monty Alexander, Pablo Aslan, Nailor “Proveta” Azevedo, Jon Batiste, Brian Blade, Kim Burrell, Henry Butler, Shemekia Copeland, Stanley Cowell, Paquito D’Rivera, James De Frances, Michael Feinstein, Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, Benny Golson, John Hammond, Herbie Hancock, Allan Harris, Bill Holman, Nino Josele, Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, Anthony Madruga, Gregoire Maret, Ellis Marsalis, Bennie Maupin, John Mayall, Cecile McLorin Salvant, John Patitucci, Danilo Perez, Pipi Piazzolla, Eric Reed, Dianne Reeves, Marcus Roberts, Catherine Russell, Marvin Sewell, Wayne Shorter Quartet, Luciana Souza, Charles Tolliver, Doug Wamble, Cassandra Wilson, Matt Wilson, Reggie Workman, Nikki Yanofsky.
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tours U.S. with Wynton Marsalis at 50 repertoire and works drawing on the history of jazz.
• Jazz For Young People®concerts: What Is Improvisation? hosted by Matt Wilson, What Is New Orleans Jazz? hosted by Alvin Atkinson, Who Is Duke Ellington? hosted by Wynton Marsalis. JFYP concerts include expanded pre-concert activities for families.
• 17th annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival in May.
• Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola features guest artists nightly, After Hours sets, discounted student rates, special Monday night programming and new festivals: Generations In Jazz Festival in September, Drums Across The World in January-February, Sing Into Spring Festival in April-May.
• Swing University classes led by Phil Schaap, Ed Berger, Connie Crothers, Bill Easley, Mercedes Ellington, Vincent Gardner, Larry Ridley, Terry Waldo, Ben Young.
• WeBop® classes for 8 month – 5 year olds and a caregiver continue at Frederick P. Rose Hall and at Head Start in Washington Heights in collaboration with Dr. Lori Custodero, Teachers College, Columbia University.
• For the 2011-12 season chronology, click here.

TICKET INFORMATION

Subscriptions
Beginning today, subscriptions will be available for renewal for all Rose Theater and The Allen Room packages (subscription packages offer a 10-15% discount on all single ticket prices). To ensure retention of their same seats, current subscribers may renew today through April 8. New subscriptions may be purchased beginning April 4.

Flex Fridays offers subscribers the flexibility and freedom to choose any Friday evening performance in Rose Theater or any Friday 9:30pm performance inThe Allen Room (Flex Fridays offer a 10% discount on single ticket prices in Rose Theater).

Pick Four package: Subscribers choose four concerts from a select list at a 10% discount. Unlike Flex Fridays, choices are not limited to Friday night performances, and provide the subscriber an option for Thursday and Saturday evening performances as well as the flexibility to customize a package. Go to jalc.org/subs for more information.
To order a subscription beginning April 4 or to request information, please call the Subscription Services hotline at 212-258-9999 or e-mail subscriptions@jalc.org, or visit jalc.org/subs.

The Hang Set is a subscription series for under-40 social urbanites that offers a three-concert package at one great price. Featuring pre-concert parties with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, discounts to shops and restaurants, backstage events, artist meet-and-greets, and concert tickets, the Hang Set is an excellent opportunity for culturally-savvy young professionals to mingle and hear great music. For more details on how to become a Hang Set member, please visit jalc.org/hangset.

For more information on 11-12 season subscriptions, go to jalc.org/subs.

Membership Discount
Jazz at Lincoln CenterMembers (donors of $50 or more) get 50% off tickets to JALC produced shows in Rose Theater and The Allen Room if the tickets are purchased the day of the show at the JALC Box Office. Members must show their membership card to receive this discount. Limit two tickets for individual donors and four tickets for family members. Subject to availability.

Pricing
Ticket prices for Rose Theater are $10, $30, $50, $75, $95 or $120 dependent upon seating section.
Jazz for Young People® tickets in Rose Theater are $12, $20, $28.

Note: Hot Seats, $10 seats for each Rose Theater performance (excluding Jazz For Young People concerts), are available for purchase to the general public on the Wednesday of each performance week. Subject to availability. Hot Seats are available only by walk up at the Box Office, maximum of four per person.

Ticket prices for The Allen Room are $65 for the 7:30pm sets and $55 for the 9:30pm sets.
Ticket prices for Jazz & Popular Song shows are $75, $95, $120.

*Please note that a $2.00 Jazz at Lincoln Center Facility Fee applies to ALL ticket purchases, with the exception of $10 Hot Seats. A $6 handling fee also applies when purchasing tickets from CenterCharge or from jalc.org.

Swing University classes are $125 -$250.

Essentially Ellington Final Concert tickets in Avery Fisher Hall are $20 and $25.

All single tickets for The Allen Room, Irene Diamond Education Center and Rose Theater can be purchased through jalc.org or CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 10am to 9pm. Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, ground floor. Box Office hours: Monday-Saturday from 10am to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain) and Sunday from noon to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain).

Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, one of the three main performance venues located in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s home, Frederick P. Rose Hall, produces world-class jazz performances nig htly and welcomes locals and visitors alike to enjoy the city’s best music, food and libations. The intimate 140-seat jazz club is set against a glittering backdrop with spectacular views of Central Park. There are student rates and special Monday Night Presentations. Tony Bennett calls Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola “the best jazz room in the city.” Reservations: 212-258-9595 and
Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.

Single tickets go on sale August 15.

Jazz at Lincoln Center proudly acknowledges its major corporate partners: Brooks Brothers, Bloomberg, Centric, The Coca-Cola Company, Con Edison, HSBC, MasterCard, Related, SiriusXM.

MasterCard is the preferred card of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The last night of a tour is always bittersweet, but this gig was fun. The blues was on the menu and people were hungry. The tour was, as always, revelatory. New and old friends, all kinds of different stuff happening on the bandstand. We mainly played the Vitoria Suite and our arrangements of Chick Corea’s music.

Whenever I announce Chick’s music, someone yells,“Yeah!” above the general murmur of approval.
I pointed this out to our audience last night and said that I told Chick and that he was happy about that response.

The cats’ dedication is evidenced by the attention to detail they give to each song on every concert. On stage, I say we have an embarrassment of riches. And we do. Everywhere I turn, Ted, Vincent, Carlos, Marcus…….Ryan, Vic. Bam! A lot of ability writing, playing and teaching. A lot of soul and love of the music and experience. Ali.

I consistently receive a plethora of wonderful comments about how generous all the guys are when interfacing with students, audience members, and staff. Generally we speak to student groups after soundchecks and sometimes after gigs. I love when guys who are not scheduled to teach come in and share a few anecdotes with the youngsters.

Of course, everyone is bone tired now. We normally have a group toast in the intermission of the last gig of a tour. We missed it last night. The President of Moorehouse College, Dr. Robert Franklin celebrated his birthday at our concert which was presented by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. I love him and the orchestra also for doing their best to play my Blues Symphony (which I still need to do LOTS of work on). Normally we get out right after the gig.

Tonight, there are so many great musicians in Atlanta, I go with my boy Milkshake to Danny and Terry Harper’s jam session at Churchill Grounds and play till 2 in the morning with a room full of swinging trumpeters including their son Terence. It was a late-night affair with great warmth and the feeling of informal profundity that good jazz brings to a space.

John Robertson came in around 1 and played all kinds of piano. His son James, 12 and of sterling personality, was already there tearing up the place and is someone to watch out for on the alto sax. Now, at 7:30am we are on I-85 staring hard at 16hrs of driving. No soon as we finish lunch, Frank and Boss Bragg strong arm me into going to a rib restaurant. We circle Lexington, North Carolina for 1hr looking for Lexington One Barbecue. Frank and Lolis wrote THE book on BBQ- ‘Smokestack Lightning’, so you can’t tell him anything about it.

They get a couple of chopped shoulder sandwiches and I cajole them into stopping at North Carolina Central so’s I can see Branford and his students. Book (branford) gives us the directions and at 4pm we fall into a room full of students and talk about and play jazz music. We conclude by playing some modern counterpoint on Sweet Georgia Brown. It’s so much fun playing with him, I want to laugh. I remember how Gerry Mulligan used to smile like a mischievous kid when telling me,“Hey, let’s play that counterpoint.” Yeah me and Book riffed on it for a while to great mutual enjoyment. Even Frank admitted he liked it. Boss Bragg said the music was cool but he enjoyed the educational questions (about mouthpiece sizes and what not). Now we are back on that same road except it is 6:20pm.

Two hours just evaporated like that. The sky is giving way to headlights, and birds cut stark unpredictable rhythms against the fading horizon. Soon, trees are shadows and there is only asphalt, white lines, green and blue signs, and specks of intermittent yellow. In order to avoid finishing my arrangements for next weeks concerts, I put on a recording of William Warfield singing Aaron Copland’s arrangement of the American song, ‘The Golden Willow Tree’ with Mr. Copland himself conducting.

I knew Mr. Warfield, and I swear I can hear the feeling of how orchestra members who are not playing listen to him on this recording. Copland’s arrangement is spare and beautiful and imaginative and bubbling. Mr. Warfield’s voice is full of the sweet, anguished fire and intelligent pride I hear in Lester Young. The song is poignant and rich, but I confess I don’t quite understand the meaning of it. If anyone does, please let me know.
We’re out here. Still in the swing seat.
Early in the 21st.

Wynton

Jazz at Lincoln Center announces the 15 finalist bands and one winning community band for its prestigious 16th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival. The bands will compete and participate in workshops, jam sessions, and more, during a three-day Competition & Festival in New York City. The three top-placing bands perform with Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis, as guest soloist, followed by a performance by the 15-piece Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra – whose members serve as mentors for the finalist bands throughout the weekend. The Festival’s finale is an awards ceremony honoring outstanding soloists, sections and the top three bands. The Competition & Festival is the culmination of the annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Program (EE), which also includes regional festivals, teaching resources, a summer Band Director Academy, monthly newsletters, and more.

Finalists:

• Agoura High School, Agoura Hills, CA
• William H. Hall High School, West Hartford, CT
• Dillard Center for the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL
• New World School of the Arts, Miami, FL
• Valley High School, West Des Moines, IA
• Downers Grove South High School, Downers Grove, IL
• East St. Louis High School, East St. Louis, IL
• St. Charles North High School, St Charles, IL
• Foxboro High School, Foxboro, MA
• Wellesley High School, Wellesley, MA
• River East Collegiate, Winnipeg, MB
• Temple High School, Temple, TX
• Mountlake Terrace High School, Mountlake Terrace, WA
• Roosevelt High School, Seattle, WA
• Sun Prairie High School, Sun Prairie, WI

Winner of Community Band Category:
Pacific Crest Jazz Orchestra, Portland, OR

Judges:
WYNTON MARSALIS, RICH DEROSA, DAVID BERGER, VINCENT GARDNER, JOHNNY MANDEL

In-School Clinicians:
RONALD CARTER, WYCLIFFE GORDON, SHERMAN IRBY, TED NASH, LOREN SCHOENBERG, REGINALD THOMAS, RODNEY WHITAKER, TODD WILLIAMS

Mentors:
members of the JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA

When/Where:
Competition & Festival:May 12-14 at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Final Concert:
May 14 at Avery Fisher Hall, 7:30pm

How:
Free tickets for each Competition Part will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis, one hour before the start of each concert on May 13 and May 14.

Tickets for the Concert and Awards Ceremony are $20 or $25 and available now at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, by calling CenterCharge at 212-721-6500 or at jalc.org.

For more information or a schedule of events, visit: jalc.org/essentiallyellington.

Background/Statistics:
Throughout March and April, Jazz at Lincoln Center will send, free of charge, a professional musician to each of the 15 finalist and winning community band schools to lead an intensive day-long workshop of rehearsals, lessons, and master classes. The free clinics are part of the rich 16-year history of this unique music education program, which has reached more than 300,000 students in more than 3,000 high schools across all 50 U.S. states, Canada, Australia and American schools abroad. EE has produced and distributed more than 96,000 copies of 92 previously unavailable scores and 222 finalist bands have traveled to New York City to participate in the annual Competition & Festival.

This year Jazz at Lincoln Center distributed more than 9,200 newly transcribed scores, reference recordings and additional educational materials.

While the music of Duke Ellington continues to be central to Essentially Ellington, in 2008, Jazz at Lincoln Center expanded Essentially Ellington repertoire to include other seminal big band composers including Benny Carter and Mary Lou Williams. The 2010-11 Essentially Ellington season is the first time in the history of the program that repertoire composed for the Count Basie Orchestra will be included in the program. Repertoire includes, “Every Day (I Have the Blues),” “Swingin’ The Blues,” and “Tippin’ on the Q.T.” and by Duke Ellington, “Harlem Speaks,” “Portrait of Mahalia Jackson” from New Orleans Suite plus “Prelude to a Kiss” composed by Ellington and arranged by Billy Strayhorn.
This year 1,536 high schools in the United States, Canada, and American schools in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, and Switzerland received Essentially Ellington materials.

110 bands entered the competition by submitting a recorded performance of three compositions.

The entrieswere evaluated in a blind screening by jazz education experts RONALD CARTER, ANDREW HOMZY, LOREN SCHOENBERG, and TODD WILLIAMS.

15 finalists and one community band were selected.

Quotes:
“It is extremely gratifying to see the results of the seeds we sowed 16 years ago when we started Essentially Ellington. The improvement in the quality of the bands down through the years attests to the artistic substance of Duke Ellington’s music. The enthusiasm and dedication of students, families, band directors, judges, and alumni testify to the timeless American values that define this competition and festival. I’m looking forward to hearing this year’s finalists; it is my favorite time of year.”
Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director,
Jazz at Lincoln Center

“Through initiatives such as expanded community outreach, Essentially Ellington continues to cultivate interest and passion for our music throughout North America. Participation in all elements of the program has increased this year, with new directors and students, illustrating how building a strong jazz culture can carry a community through transition and maintain excellence in their programs. We look forward to coming together in May with new and familiar schools to celebrate the positive impact jazz can have.”
Erika Floreska, Director of Education,
Jazz at Lincoln Center

Sponsorship:
Founding leadership support for Essentially Ellington is provided by The Jack and Susan Rudin Educational and Scholarship Fund. Major support is provided by The Con Edison Community Partnership Fund, The Irene Diamond Fund, Alfred and Gail Engleberg, The Ella Fitzgerald Foundation, The Heckscher Foundation for Children, The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation, The Mericos Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Surdna Foundation, and the United States Department of Education.

For more information:
Bridget Wilson
Associate · Public Relations
Phone 212-258-9868
Email: bwilson@jalc.org

Many highlights. From Elliot’s thematically concise and acrobatic offering on ‘Straight Up and Down’ (plus he’s suffering from a serious stomach virus and shouldn’t even be on a bandstand) to Vincent’s singing on Joe Turner’s Blues (pure soul, imagination and Ooo-Ble-Yew). The rhythm section was loping all night long and Carlos had his hard hat on.

The saxophone section played with absolute dedication and synchronized nuance on the very last song of the night (Ted’s arrangement of ‘Old MacDonald’) on the second to last night of the tour. Before the gig Ali, Vincent, and Sherman all scrunched over their computers working on arrangements for next week’s concerts in the House of Swing with Ute Lemper.

My 7th grade teacher, Sr. Lee Ann, was there. She was such a great teacher.
I still show off letters with her lyrical and meticulous handwriting. After an hour or so of meeting with our audience and talking to young musicians, I had the opportunity to sit with her for a minute. We shared jokes and pleasantries and stories. She told me, “I have loved you for a very long time.” It felt like someone putting a blanket over you as you struggle to sleep through a cold night.

Well, now we are under steel gray skies passing southern, ranch-style homes, alongside some railroad tracks, past an occasional field of cotton, passing small businesses bearing people’s names—-Lula’s, Roy’s, Beryl’s and the winner of the contest this morning goes to a lounge, ‘Stagger Lee’s.’ Frank said that’s because of how people walk out of there. I grew up down the street from railroad tracks and always feel something when I hear a train or see some tracks— tales of journeys upon journeys from the Underground Railroad to ‘The City of New Orleans’ to the Glory Train.

On I-565 east passing the Davidson Center for Space Research, the shuttle and some earlier rockets announce themselves proudly against the sky. Their beautiful, streamlined architecture change the mood of the highway and cast a long shadow over a chain-gang with fluorescent yellow uniforms and orange trash bags.

Places like Stagger Lee’s, yeah, I was in those too. As a boy, I never liked the smell of stale beer in a lounge in the day time.
At night it was ok because everybody was looking for something. In the day you can already see.

Wynton

From way off you can smell cattle sloshing in their holding pens on the last leg of a bad journey. Water towers announce the presence of a main street, a high school, something to eat.
Here we go.

A strip mall. Civilization.
Damn

Wynton

I’m telling you that every dreamy, unmanaged, wisping, floaty shape against the horizon inspires optimism and is celebratory of freedom. And here comes cars, cars, cars with so many rapidly passing headlights and there go smaller, red-eyed tail lights guiding us through the immediate landscape in syncopated polyphony with the criss-crossing brights of vehicles who zoom rank and file through the arteries and veins of this concrete maze we call highways and Frank is sleeping.

Boss Bragg, not ever given to much talk, takes in the new sun as it peeks through looming mountains. We speed past waking neighborhoods that we will never know.

Wynton

New Album To Be Released March 29 On Blue Note – Recorded Live At Jazz At Lincoln Center, Album Is A Tribute To The Iconic Star Of Soul, R&B, Country, Jazz & Pop

Given the rousing artistic and commercial success of the first recorded collaboration of legendary country troubadour Willie Nelson and jazz statesman Wynton Marsalis on 2008’s Blue Note album Two Men With the Blues, it’s not surprising that the pair would rendezvous again. The New York Times called it “a smart and heartfelt record,” while Entertainment Weekly wrote that “Willie and Wynton may seem like an odd couple, but this live disc makes the country legend and jazz master sound like natural partners with Marsalis’ usual horn-fronted band doing the driving and Nelson settling in perfectly with his off-beat vocal phrasing.”

The first meeting of these kindred spirits took place at The Allen Room at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center for two nights in 2007; their encore appearance was also staged at the heralded jazz house — this time for two sold-out nights at Rose Theater in February 2009 with special guest Norah Jones. Rather than rehash the previous material Nelson and Marsalis had first presented, the threesome paid homage to the music of the late Ray Charles, the iconic star of soul, r&b, country, jazz and pop.

On March 29, Blue Note will release the category-defying album from those shows, Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles, a 12-tune song cycle about the ups and downs of love. It features tunes that Charles put on the musical map, including “Hallelujah I Love Her So,” “Cryin’ Time,” “Hit the Road Jack,” “Busted,” “Makin’ Whoopie” and arguably his greatest hit, “What’d I Say.” All the tunes feature new, original arrangements by Marsalis and artists within his Jazz at Lincoln Center circle. The songs are rendered in a variety of styles, including gospel two-beat, boogaloo, country ballad, bolero, hard bop, r&b, waltz and 4/4 swing. Instrumental support at the concert came via the trumpeter’s working quintet—tenor saxophonist Walter Blanding, pianist Dan Nimmer, bassist Carlos Henriquez and drummer Ali Jackson—and Nelson’s longtime sidekick, Mickey Raphael, on harmonica.

Marsalis arranged the set list as a story line about love: “You fall in love, you get lost and busted, and then you try to come back,” he says.

“It’s what I call root-groove music,” explains Marsalis. “The root music cuts across all the boundaries and genres in American music.” He adds, “There was a time in the early ‘50s when artists would come up and be influenced by all types of music.” Nelson agrees: “You have to love all kinds of music to put your own interpretation on [the songs].”

Nelson, who praises Charles’s classic country disc I Can’t Stop Loving You, says, “He did more for country music with that one album than any of us could have done because he opened country songs and country music to millions of his fans and brought a whole lot of people together.”

Jones was thrilled to be invited to share the stage. “It was a no-brainer for me,” she says. I love Willie so much and have had a musical relationship with him. And I’ve always wanted to do something with Wynton.” When she heard the theme of the evening was going to focus on Charles’ music, she got excited: “I know all those songs. We all just love his music. That’s the common factor.”

“This was a special event for me,” says Nelson. “It always is when we get together.”

The track listing for Here We Go Again is as follows:

1. Hallelujah I Love Her So (Gospel 2-beat / Boogaloo / 4/4 Swing)
2. Come Rain or Come Shine (Walking Ballad)
3. Unchain My Heart (Bolero with Habanera bass)
4. Cryin’ Time (Country Ballad)
5. Losing Hand (Dirge with Chain-Gang Shuffle)
6. Hit The Road Jack (Gospel 2-beat / 4/4 Swing)
7. I’m Moving On (Boogaloo with Afro-Latin Backbeat / 4/4 Swing)
8. Busted (Gospel 12/8 Shuffle)
9. Here We Go Again (Rhythm & Blues 12/8 Shuffle)
10. Makin’ Whoopie (Hard-Bop 2-beat / 4/4 Swing)
11. I Love You So Much (It Hurts) (Waltz)
12. What’d I Say (Boogaloo)

This glorious hour speaks to the timelessness of the human desire and quest for freedom, equality and for dignity. This moment, in a far away land and in another time, speaks yet again to the greatness of the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, and to the insight of the Founding Fathers and the debate around democracy that attended their deliberations. It brings into focus the struggles of our own country to better realize the ideals which undergird our way of life.

Struggles which include a bloody and defining Civil War, life and death fights for enfranchisement of the excluded, and of course, the travails of the American Negro whose non-violent Civil Rights struggles are so clearly resonant in this relatively peaceful revolution. And though we continue to work through kinks in our democracy, we have surely received a eye-opening, spirit-lifting boost from the recent happenings in Tunisia and now, and no more significantly, Egypt.

Jazz is always on the side of freedom, always on the side of equality, always on the side of human dignity. It came from people who were slaves and therefore, keenly attuned to ascendant changes in the fragile harmonies of the human spirit.
From Buddy Bolden’s first revolutionary notes, to Bix Beiderbecke’s decision to play this music in spite of his family’s disrespect of ‘nigger music’, to Benny Goodman’s historic integration of his band (before baseball), to John Coltrane’s ‘Alabama’, jazz musicians have always known—-when YOU are free, I become more so.

Here is our recording of Warmdaddy’s “Egyptian Blues”

Wynton

Who says jazz can’t draw an audience? On Sunday, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra presented a performance of uncompromising big-band jazz to a wildly appreciative audience at the sold-out Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

It’s been 28 years since the ever-youthful Marsalis made his Washington debut, and by now it seems clear that the Lincoln Center Orchestra – JLCO, for short – may be his greatest achievement.

Before the concert, Marsalis was honored for his work with the Capitol Jazz Project, a middle-school jazz curriculum he developed for the D.C. Public Schools in collaboration with the Washington Performing Arts Society, which presented the concert. At a time when other school systems are cutting arts programs, the Capitol Jazz Project is growing, and many of its students performed earlier in the evening on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage.

Marsalis pointed out that he first met several members of his band in their early teens, when they were first getting acquainted with jazz in school. One of them, bass player Carlos Henriquez, has become an anchor of the JCLO’s rhythm section.

Henriquez wrote one of the concert’s strongest pieces, “Two-Three’s Adventure,” drawn from the orchestra’s recent tour of Cuba. (The “two-three” in the title comes from the pattern of the Cuban clave rhythm.) The exuberant tune showed off the full firepower of the 15-piece band, with a blazing trumpet section, a swinging alto saxophone solo by Sherman Irby and sizzling trumpet work by Kenny Rampton.

Young trombonist Christopher Crenshaw composed the appealingly retro-styled “Bearden (The Block),” inspired by the paintings of Romare Bearden. Amid various shifts in rhythm and tone, tenor saxophonist Victor Goines purred a lush, dreamlike solo that was pure honey.

A recent composition by Marsalis himself, “The Tree of Freedom,” was a portrait of the Basque region of Spain, accented with dynamic swirls of rhythm and color.

Not everything in the concert, however, was a complete success. Two tunes by Chick Corea were at least one too many, and a couple of other numbers fell flat.

It was a shame that the JCLO didn’t play anything by Duke Ellington on a visit to his home town, but there was some consolation in a memorable version of “I Left My Baby,” a blues first recorded by Count Basie in the 1930s.

Holding his trombone in one hand, Crenshaw sang the down-home vocals, but the brightest spotlight shone on Marcus Printup, whose brilliant trumpet solo alternately shook the walls and seemed to squeeze tears from his horn.

The audience erupted with a huge ovation, overjoyed by the spirit of jazz.

By Matt Schudel – Washington Post
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/31/AR2011013105522.html

March 31, 2011 – 8:00 PM
April 1, 2011 – 8:00 PM
April 2, 2011 – 8:00 PM

buy tickets on jalc.org

In the 110 years since his birth, Kurt Weill’s music has been played by everyone from Louis Armstrong (“Mack the Knife”) to Gil Evans (“My Ship”). Ute Lemper, “a foremost interpreter of Weill” (New York Times) along with Warren Wolf on vibes, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, and Music Director Ted Nash will show how Weill’s songs belong to the jazz world as much as to Broadway, film, and the concert hall.

Lemper says of the concert, “It’s not just a Kurt Weill recital, this one is a concert with Wynton. It’s a concert with his unbelievable big band. Fifteen musicians that take this music into a whole different universe… All that can happen is that they step slightly out of their world and I step out of my world and we’ll meet in the middle.”

When:
March 3-5, 2011; 8pm

Where:
Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street, New York, NY.

Tickets:
Ticket prices for Rose Theater are $10, $30, $50, $75, $95 or $120 dependent upon seating section.

Note: Hot Seats, $10 seats for each Rose Theater performance (excluding Jazz For Young People concerts), are available for purchase to the general public on the Wednesday of each performance week. Subject to availability. Hot Seats are available only by walk up at the Box Office, maximum of four per person.

All tickets can be purchased through jalc.org or CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 9am to 9pm.
Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, ground floor. Box Office hours: Monday-Saturday from 10am to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain) and Sunday from noon to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain).

Clapton, a guitar icon and three-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Artistic Director and nine-time GRAMMY® Award winner, will perform blues classics which may include tunes by Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Howling Wolf. For these special concerts, Clapton and Marsalis will be joined by Marcus Printup (trumpet), Chris Crenshaw (trombone), Victor Goines (clarinet), Dan Nimmer (piano), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Ali Jackson (drums) and Don Vappie (banjo).

The April 7 performance marks Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2011 Annual Gala evening. A gala dinner will be held at Roseland Ballroom at 239 W. 52nd Street immediately following the concert and will feature entertainment by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Proceeds from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2011 Annual Gala benefit the thousands of performance, education and broadcast events the organization produces each year. Underwriters of this extraordinary event are Diana DiMenna, John Arnhold, and Dick Cashin. Co-Chairmen are Helen and Robert J. Appel, Marlene Hess and James Zirin, Little Johnny Koerber and Kari Gronberg, Chip and Burwell Schorr, and Dr. Agnes Varis.

Vice-Chairmen are Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn, The Jeffrey A. Altman Foundation, Bank of America, Gail and Al Engelberg, Ed and Carolyn Lewis, MasterCard, Louise and Leonard Riggio, Lisa and David T. Schiff, Melanie Shorin and Greg Feldman and Mary Kay and John Strangfeld/Prudential Financial.

Clapton and Marsalis first collaborated for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2003 gala, and most recently, Marsalis appears on Clapton’s 2010 CD, Clapton.

When:
Jazz at Lincoln Center 2011 Annual Gala: Thursday, April 7, 2011, 7pm. Tickets on sale now.

Public Concerts: Friday, April 8 and Saturday, April 9, 8pm.
Jazz at Lincoln Center subscribers and members advance sale on January 24
MasterCard® cardholders advance sale on January 28. 
Go to HYPERLINK “http://jalc.org/advancesale/” http://jalc.org/advancesale/ for more info. 

Tickets for the general public on sale February 12.


Where:
Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center
Broadway at 60th Street, New York, New York *April 7 gala post-performance dinner party to take place at Roseland Ballroom, 239 W. 52nd Street

Tickets:

April 7 – Jazz at Lincoln Center 2011 Annual Gala: 
Tables are $100,000, $50,000, $35,000 and $20,000. Tickets are $5,000 and $2,500.
For additional Gala information or to make a reservation, please call 212-258-9961 or email Louise T. Hood, Director of Special Events at lhood@jalc.org.

April 8 and 9 – Public Concerts: 
Ticket prices for Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues are $40, $95, $150 or $245 dependent upon seating section.
All tickets can be purchased through jalc.org or CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 10am to 9pm. Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, ground floor. Box Office hours: Monday-Saturday from 10am to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain) and Sunday from noon to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain).

Sponsorship: 
MasterCard is a lead sponsor of this performance.
Jazz at Lincoln Center proudly acknowledges its major corporate partners: BET, Bloomberg, Brooks Brothers, The Coca-Cola Company, Con Edison, Entergy, HSBC, Related, SiriusXM. 

MasterCard is the preferred card of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
High Resolution Photos available at: jalc.org

For more information:
 Zooey Tidal Jones
Associate Director • Public Relations
Phone 212-258-9821

Email: zjones@jalc.org

Then, and what I’m sure is the only time this ever happened in the history of music, all of the people began to sing that song which happened to fit the blues in the right place in the form. Normally a crowd has a two or three note chant but as you can hear, this song was involved and it took place over a chorus of blues. We couldn’t believe it, and the rest of the set continued in that vein. People loving the music. We had never experienced anything like that before or after.

Wynton

Wynton Marsalis grew up in a family of New Orleans jazz musicians and received his first trumpet as a sixth birthday present from bandleader Al Hirt. At 14 he debuted with the Louisiana Philharmonic; at 17 he moved to New York, where he attended Juilliard, joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, assembled his own band, and began a prolific composing and recording career. In 1987, Marsalis founded Jazz at Lincoln Center, which has grown into the world’s biggest arts organization dedicated to Jazz.

Why did you pick the trumpet?
I got a trumpet for my sixth birthday, but I didn’t practice it. And then the summer I was 12, I started listening to John Coltrane, and I wanted to play. There was so much racism when we grew up, and that’s part of what inspired me; I wanted to represent my humanity. The work ethic I developed at that time—I still have that.

How did you learn to be a leader?
I was always a leader on teams. I called the plays in football, pitched baseball, played point guard in basketball. If something was happening, the guys always asked me, “Man, what do you think we ought to do?”

When I was a younger bandleader I was too harsh on the musicians. As I got older the people who played with me taught me how to be better. An important thing I learned was to have a clear direction. If you are unclear or wishy-washy, or you lack the heart, they can’t follow you. It’s exactly like leading on a horn. In our band, I play fourth trumpet, following Ryan Kisor. He’s young enough to have been my student, but he’s a great lead player. He lets you know what he’s going to play before he plays it. If everything’s falling apart, he comes in. You can depend on him.

How is leading a band like running a company?
You have to know what all your people can do. The ones who need to be challenged, you give them challenges. The ones who need to be carried, you carry them. The ones you need to let go, you let them go. A leader has got to have a certain kindness but a certain meanness, too.

What’s your theory on talent versus practice?
You can become proficient at anything. If you’re a boxer, you can practice four million hours and become proficient to a certain point, but if you don’t have the talent, you won’t be the one to beat. You can’t practice the ability to make connections or have a deep, spiritual insight. To be great, you need courage to speak out and endurance to deal with what is given to you. Ornette Coleman got beat up for playing his music, but he played it. That’s not something you can practice your way into.

How do you hire musicians?
I look for four things: First, individuality. Do they have a unique sound? Second, knowledge of the music. Third, do they respond well to pressure? And fourth, do they want to be a part of us?

Do you think about how somebody will fit into the group?
People with difficult personalities can survive in our world. If they can play, we embrace them and we work with them. But that doesn’t mean they become less difficult.

Do you need to be alone to compose?
I grew up in a big family with a lot of noise, so I like distraction. As a matter of fact, if I’m composing, I’ll turn the television on. It makes me concentrate more deeply on what I’m doing.

Why did you decide to take on such a big management role with Lincoln Center?
My overall goal is to raise the level of artistic consciousness in our country, so that we become a country of the arts. To the day I die I want to work on that. I could go out and play and make much more money and have a much better time, but the work we do is important work. And I’ve learned so much doing it.

What’s been the biggest challenge in building a major cultural institution from scratch?
Getting the level of financial support that the music deserves. That would be number one. We’re constantly trying to find money to do arts programs. And when you have financial strain, you start to make decisions that are not the most prudent best-quality decisions. I’m not saying that we have done that, but it’s a pressure.

You’ve been criticized a lot for taking a conservative approach to jazz.
I like being critiqued. I always knew I was original. If anything, the criticism made me more determined to go in my own direction. You have to assess criticism and then make your own decisions. You have to say, “We’re going this way.” That’s what steels your leadership—you survive and become a better leader. If you can’t take it, you’re not the leader.

How much do you think about what the audience wants to hear?
I always think about what the audience wants to hear—and what they need to hear. What do I have to give people to bring them into the feeling of this music? The audience has got to really want to be there. Shakespeare had the right equation. He gave you sexuality and skullduggery and backstabbing, and then he gave you artistry, too. The high and low.

What can leaders learn from listening to jazz?
If you hone your listening skills so that you can follow the development of a solo, you can listen more empathetically to people when they talk and hear underneath what they’re saying. You can feel their intention.

What has composing taught you about creativity?
Celebrate your traditions as you innovate. As you come up with new things, always reach back. Offer everything you have all the time.

source: http://hbr.org/2011/01/lifes-work-wynton-marsalis/ar/1

Myers: In an interview about your book, “Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life,” you said, “Jazz allows people to find their creativity and focus it.” Would you expand on that?

Marsalis: If we all have a thing that defines us; we have preferences and likes, tastes, and the art form of jazz celebrates individuality. So, when you hear our band play, each musician has a different sound and a different approach to music. We have four trumpeters and all four of us play in a different way and there’s no one correct way to play. There’s many ways to play and each of us has an individual imprint and the music teaches us to be proud of our unique characteristics. It doesn’t push us in a direction of sameness. To focus it means that you can put your creativity in a context. It’s a lot like when you put your ideas down on paper. You don’t have to be a musician. When you listen to people play, it focuses your attention. Listening is one of the most undervalued activities in our culture right now. To just sit down and listen to someone else play allows you to focus your own thoughts and ideas around how they expose their material. It works for families also.

Myers: How so?

Marsalis: Well, a family can sit down and just take time and listen to something. It’s an activity–just sit and be with each other and listen to something and be silent and then after it’s over to discuss what you heard. That’s a great family activity.

Myers: Years ago when I was in college, you came and spoke at a lecture hall. You said that jazz was interactive, and you advised us to just listen to the music the first time an instrument is introduced in a song. The next time that instrument comes around, think of what it played the first time–keep that in your mind–because the soloist is about to change it and do something different to complement what he did the first time. Do I have that right?

Marsalis: Right; that’s exactly right. Like following a conversation.

Myers: That really opened the door to jazz for me once I realized that I could take part in it.

Marsalis: Right. It’s very interactive listening and it develops your attention span.

Myers: Even with your dad’s amazing piano playing in the house growing up, you didn’t like jazz until you were 12. You said that it was noisy and the players played too long. But something happened though, and that changed it for you. Would you share that revelation with readers?

Marsalis: The summer that I was 12, I started to actually listen to the music. Before that time I didn’t really listen to it. I was always around it, so I took it for granted. I didn’t take the time to actually listen and try to understand it. That summer I started listening to John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” and it just began to speak to me. I began to understand it.

Myers: What can people get from jazz that they may not be able to get in other aspects of life?

Marsalis: Resilience, because the jazz musicians have always survived through their art and they’ve never really experienced the type of success that less artistic music has. So they’ve always made a choice to embrace quality. Resilient music is not easy solution music. It’s the music of “food for the soul” we call it.

Myers: In an interview you said, “jazz is incorruptible.” What did you mean by that?

Marsalis: In spite of whatever the trends were they [jazz musicians] decided to play that kind of music, and many times that was a decision that separated you from the choices of your generation or the larger culture; and they accepted that.

Myers: With the election of Barack Obama it seems like there’s a new sense of hope and people are engaged in a way that they have not been in a long time. The country seems optimistic. It seems like we’re really looking to heal from the mistakes of the last administration. What kind of role can jazz play in this?

Marsalis: Well, jazz is our cultural art form. We invented it. The time for cultural consciousness still has not come to our country. It will come. I haven’t seen it reflected in this time, but when we begin to understand what it is to bring the generations of people together, the music will be here for the people. First of all, the best of music is recorded so it’s always available, and there’s so many jazz bands all over the country. It’s just a matter of time that the nation will need to reach for our art form to remind us of who we are, and the music will be here.

Myers: But, people are not reaching for jazz yet?

Marsalis: No, not yet–we’re not looking to any culture for a solution. We still think that there’s a monetary solution to our problems. When those things start to fail, then you go into the soul.

Myers: Let’s talk about your upcoming release, “He and She.” It’s an album that’s built around a poem?

Marsalis: Yes, and the poem is about a man and a woman, a love poem about what happened between them. How they look at stuff; relationships… what it means to not have romantic relationships; what it means to have them. What happens when a woman leaves you? It covers a lot of ground through a poetic kind of symbolism… And it deals with the number three, because three is kind of a mystical number of people coming together. When two people get together the make up is three: there’s me – there’s you and the person you become together. It’s everything and nothing and the space that it contains.

Myers: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?

Marsalis: Yeah, it’s all threes. Also, waltz tempo.

Myers: Who wrote the poem?

Marsalis: I wrote the poem. The poem was harder to write than the music.

Myers: Do you typically write poetry?

Marsalis: Yeah, I love poetry. My favorite poet is William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet. I always travel with a book of Complete Poems by William Butler Yeats.

source: http://genemyers.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/interview-with-wynton-marsalis/

CBS’ 60 Minutes – Part II

60 Minutes Extra: The Universal Language of Music

60 Minutes Extra: Different Countries, Different Audiences

60 Minutes Extra: Marsalis on Havana & New Orleans

60 Minutes Extra: Marsalis’ Musical “Insanity”

60 Minutes Overtime: Edward R. Murrow and Louis Armstrong

Wynton Marsalis, America’s Musical Ambassador (transcription)

(CBS) As we bring in the New Year, we thought we’d bring you some great music.

He is an American master – Wynton Marsalis – at age 49, arguably the best known living jazz artist and leader of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, probably the best big band at work today. They’re on the road constantly, bringing America’s most distinctive art form to the world, most recently to London, Berlin and Havana.

“60 Minutes” and correspondent Morley Safer were lucky enough to tag along – a joyous assignment, if there ever was one, trying to get a sense of this band of brothers, their music and their effect as unofficial ambassadors.

Marsalis is the leader of the band but he’s buried in the back row.

“It’s interesting. When you guys take the stage, you’re never front and center,” Safer pointed out.

“No. I play fourth trumpet. That’s my role. I like it. I’m comfortable playin’ in the trumpet section. It started because I can’t really conduct. I’m not a good conductor,” Marsalis explained.

He tried, until a brave member of the band delivered the verdict. “Every time I would start conducting, if I would mess something up, he would look down at his music and go (thumb over shoulder). That meant ‘Go get back in the trumpet section,’” Marsalis remembered.

And there Marsalis stays, storming his way through some of the most difficult, hair-raising music in the jazz repertoire.

“I like pressure. I like that. I like the challenge. I don’t have a problem with it at all. I like the feeling of nervousness. I like the feeling that something counts. And I like to be tested,” he told Safer.

Soloing certain tunes, a bass player said many years ago, is like trying to change the fan belt on your car with the engine running.

“Man, when you’re playing, and you’re playing with other people, it’s such a combination of emotion, it’s so intense. And when you make a tender statement or something’s real sweet and you just caress a note that takes more intensity. It’s powerful,” Marsalis said.

It’s hard to believe the boy wonder from New Orleans, who has been startling both jazz and classical audiences since his teens, is now pushing 50. He has won nine Grammys and a Pulitzer Prize for music.

And he has logged more miles around the world than your average secretary of state.

“You’ve spent 30 years since you were a teenager in the music business. That makes you, in a certain way, a very young elder statesman,” Safer remarked.

“I don’t feel like that. I mean, they will tease me, called me an old man since I was in my late 20s,” Marsalis said.

It was his old man, Ellis, a pianist, a New Orleans legend, who passed the jazz gene on to Wynton and three of his five brothers.

Marsalis himself, who has never married, has four children.

CBS) Back in 1995, this young “old man” sat down with our late colleague Ed Bradley to talk about his talent.

“How have you changed over the last 15 years of playing out here every day?” Bradley asked.

“Oh man, a lot. I mean, I’m calmer. When I was young I was always excited, you know? Got to do it today, and I was always paranoid about not ever being able to play good enough, you know,” Marsalis replied.

“I’m gonna ask you the same question that our friend Ed Bradley asked you 15 years ago. How’s your playing changed in the years since?” Safer asked.

“I think just a natural wisdom that comes with age. Mostly, I think I have a different type of weight in my sound. In just the 15 years I know more music. So when I’m playing I feel like it reflects a deeper knowledge. I think I hear better too,” Marsalis replied.

Their mission – his and the band’s – is to keep jazz alive, writing new music and paying homage to the treasures of the past.

Like Marsalis, most of his Lincoln Center musicians were classically trained, equally at home with Bach and the blues. They come from big cities and small towns, and include youngsters like pianist Dan Nimmer, 28, and veterans like Joe Temperley, an 81-year-old Scotsman.

“When you play in a big band, you sacrifice a lot. We have some of the greatest soloists. They know they’re gonna play one solo a night. It’s a tremendous sacrifice,” Marsalis said.

One night, you’ll find them at New York’s historic Apollo Theater, playing the score for a silent movie about trumpeter Louis Armstrong. The next night, who knows?

“We’ve played everywhere from prisons to parks, picnics, old folks homes and nursery schools. On the subway,” Marsalis said. “I spend more time on the road than at home. I love to be in a different place.”

But he told Safer he is afraid of flying, which makes things more difficult.

“But you travel across this country…by car. You won’t get on a plane,” Safer remarked.

“I love it, too,” Marsalis said, referring to the road trips. “I get to stop at people’s homes. I get to get good meals. I get to connect with all the people I’ve known.”

He took to the car after a white-knuckle flight years ago. Traveling overseas though, he has no choice but to bite the bullet and fly.

“I don’t really have to steel myself. Especially if I’m with my guys, then they’re teasing me the whole time. So I have to…act like I’m not afraid of it. But some of the ones that are teasing me are afraid, too. So we’re all acting,” he told Safer.

Wherever they travel, Marsalis and company are hailed as America’s best. And local music royalty, like rocker Eric Clapton in London, come to pay their respects.

Chatting in the shadow of the Tower Bridge, Marsalis says that for all his renown and decades of experience, his baby face gets in the way.

Like an incident he had when he walked into a bar: “And the young lady said, ‘Well, sir, we’ve got to see some ID.’ So I’m laughin, I’m sayin’ ‘My sons, they’re old enough to drink.’ I’m like, ‘These are my kids.’ And she says ‘Well, I can’t, I’ve got to see some ID, sir.’ And they just shake their heads and say, ‘Boy,’” Marsalis said.

He is a walking encyclopedia of jazz history, the legends and their music.

The London concerts focus on jazz giants of the past, their work a revelation to listeners who seldom experience the power of a big band at full throttle.

There’s music from the 1920s by the deliciously named Jelly Roll Morton. “Raconteur. Pool shark. The first great composer of jazz,” Marsalis said.
(CBS) There is the music of Benny Carter, a founding father of the big band sound. “He is a great arranger and composer, great gentleman. We had the privilege of playing under him. But also a guy who could whip some behind if it needed to be whipped,” Marsalis said.

And the maestro himself, Duke Ellington, who to Marsalis and many others, is the greatest American composer ever.

“The broadest variety of pieces, the greatest depth of insight into the nature of the American character,” Marsalis said. “A lover of our country and its people.”

“(A) quote from Duke Ellington, who says ‘By and large, jazz is like the kind of man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with,’” Safer said.

“Well, that’s true too. It deals with matters of romance. It deals with sexual things,” Marsalis agreed.

“There is a certain seductive nature to the music,” Safer said.

“Man, if you don’t have that your music is not worth listenin’ to. Yeah, you have to have that edge. You have to have that sexuality, that sensuality, you have to have that primitive feelin’. And the more primitive you have, the more refined your concert is, the more primitive you have to be,” Marsalis said.

Practically from childhood he has worked back and forth between jazz and classical music. His latest composition, the Swing Symphony, combines the two. The Lincoln Center band and the Berlin Philharmonic played the premiere: a survey of how American jazz evolved, with echoes of Ellington, Charlie Parker and other jazz greats.

“Does it sadden you that, for the most part, young people may not even know who you’re talking about when you say Charlie Parker or Duke Ellington?” Safer asked.

“It saddens me that people my age may not know that. And it’s a comment on the failure of our education system to deal with cultural education. Not just Duke Ellington. Walt Whitman. The list goes on and on. So, it saddens me for us as a nation. Because we have such a rich cultural heritage and we would be so much better for it and we would make such better decisions if we understood what brings us together,” Marsalis replied.

Jazz at Lincoln Center does its part to keep the heritage alive, bringing high school bands to New York for classes with the pros and for a chance to strut their stuff. But they are the lucky ones – across most of the country, cultural programs in the schools range from spotty to non-existent.

“The arts are our collective human heritage. You’re a better person if you know what Shakespeare was talkin’ about. If you know what Beethoven struggled with, if you know about Matisse. If you know what Louis Armstrong actually sang through his horn, you’re better. Because it’s just like, you get to speak with the wisest people who ever lived,” Marsalis said.

Maestro Marsalis speaks his universal language with his band, swingin’ in the rain with Marsalis sounding for all the world like Louis Armstrong, New Orleans’ other favorite son. In London, when Marsalis played on stage, the crowd responded with great enthusiasm – it’s a moment that tells you all you need to know about the music’s infectious appeal.

“I want us to give 100 percent all the time. We know that we’re here to serve, serve the music and to serve everyone who comes to check our music out,” Marsalis explained.

(CBS) Safer and the “60 Minutes” team also joined Marsalis and the band in Havana, a city that is forbidden to most Americans.

New Orleans and Havana are sister cities in many ways: both are on the Gulf of Mexico, their climates sultry, their cultures exotic. The French built New Orleans as the Spanish built Havana: on the backs of African slaves whose rhythms are the living pulse of both Afro-American and Afro-Cuban music.

So when New Orleans native Wynton Marsalis took his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to Havana, it was a meeting of musical minds, a musical bridge over the troubled waters that have separated the United States and Cuba for half a century.

From the band’s very first stop, it was obvious this would be a hot visit, in more ways than one. Marsalis and his musicians were just off the plane. They went to the Rumba Palace not to perform, but to acclimate.

“Cuba, that’s like one of your cousins,” Marsalis said. “They do their thing, they have their way of dancing, their way of cooking. You know, red beans and rice, the kind of food that we have.”

The great Cuban musician Compay Segundo once said it all: Cubans are frantic when it comes to appreciating music. Their moves aren’t so bad either.

The Rumba Palace crowd partied long into the night.

Soon, it would be the Americans’ turn to show their stuff, with an old fashioned New Orleans street parade, with a gaggle of music students in tow. They were spreading that timeless New Orleans rule of life: let the good times roll.

“The music touches people, the students. If you’re receptive to it and you have a little bit of it, you want it,” Marsalis said.

Havana, of course, is the city of the brothers Castro, of Che, the Cha-cha, and the classic Chevys – a city still off limits to most Americans, but a city where Cubans nearly broke down the doors to hear the American music. And the city where trumpeter Marcus Printup and the rest of the band nearly blew the roof off.

It’s the African rhythm that drives the music on both sides of the Gulf. Wandering through old Havana, the heart of the city going back 500 years, we got a lesson in clave – the basic beats.

And the Havana beat, laid down by Marsalis’ bass player, Carlos Henriquez. Put them together and they fit like beans and rice.

“It’s unbelievable, right, how that works. They have it. I mean, it’s all African,” Henriquez remarked.

And the bedrock of it all – from Africa to Cuba to America – are the drums. The band’s drummer, Ali Jackson, calls it a kind of musical DNA.

“The drums represent the people and where they’re from. And you would never lose sight of where you’re from because it lives through the music,” Jackson explained.

And the music was nonstop. Havana was hooked. For five grueling days, the band played a series of concerts and jam sessions with the best of Cuba’s musicians, young and old.

Among them, Evelyn Suarez. “What I loved about her was the type of passionate intensity that comes with being serious about sounding good. They just have a lot of people who can play,” Marsalis told Safer.

(CBS) The Lincoln Center band is an engaging and thoughtful group, fiercely competitive, yet each others’ biggest fans.

“We all get along,” Walter Blanding said. “We fight and stuff and things get a little crazy sometimes, but in the end, we all know why we’re here.”

Ted Nash and Blanding have been on the road with Marsalis for years, a blur of airplanes, hotel rooms and 18-hour days.

It is a band that is on time, sober and committed to the music. But old stereotypes die hard.

“I think people have a conception that a jazz musician is like from the 1930s or 40s. Back in the days where they all took drugs and these kinda things. And I think we’re at a different time now where we’re more serious about what we’re doing ,” Blanding said.

“And we’re nerds,” Nash added.

“That could be one way of looking at it,” Blanding said.

As for their leader, from the day he arrived, Marsalis was the toast of Havana, making the rounds of music schools, trying his fractured Spanish on admiring bystanders, and stopping for a cafe Cubano – talking about a key ingredient of jazz improvisation: taking chances.

Asked how important and valuable mistakes are, Marsalis told Safer, “Very important, because if you’re not making mistakes, you not trying. That is the art of jazz. It’s an art of negotiation, of communication.”

To band member Victor Goines, who’s also from New Orleans, the attention Marsalis gets is no surprise.

Goines and Marsalis went to kindergarten together. Asked what he was like then, Goines said, “He was always a standout from the rest, I will say.”

He’s musical standout who sets the pace for the band in another way as well.

“He works harder than anybody I know. No question,” Ali Jackson said.

A jam session with local musicians starts at dusk and goes well into the night. And anytime, anywhere, band members give master classes in the fine art of swing.

At the band’s hotel, a young musician named Shaula Ortega showed up with her husband and baby. She wanted Ted Nash to show her how to coax that distinctive jazz sound out of her horn.

They repaired to the hotel bar, other band members joined in, and soon, she was bending the blue notes just like the pros.

“It’s so beautiful to travel, because we get to mix with people. Maybe at a point when we would normally be getting kinda worn out and our batteries run down, I mean, I think we get kinda recharged a little bit from the energy of the people,” Nash said.

In a Havana restaurant, to the accompaniment of birds – exotic and domestic, plus one very hip cat – we renewed acquaintance with bass player Carlos Henriquez.

“The Cuban audience. What do you make of it?” Safer asked Henriquez.

“This audience is very smart. And they listen to details. And that’s, that’s, very deep,” he replied.

“60 Minutes” goes back a ways with Henriquez.

“You’ve said that music is gonna be your ticket out of the South Bronx,” Safer remarked. “Ticket to where?”

“To fame, I guess. That’s what I want, fame,” he replied.

He was a 14-year-old bass and guitar player when we first met him in 1994, on a story about inner city kids getting free lessons at Juilliard, New York’s famous music school. His mother made him get in the program and stick with it. As he progressed during his teens, word spread among musicians.

“And they would always say, ‘Look out for Carlito. Look out for Carlito,’” Marsalis remembered.

(CBS) He joined the band 12 years ago, and served as its co-maestro in Cuba, leading rehearsals and announcing the tunes, including some he wrote and arranged.

“I just wish my mother was around to see this. You know, and she would have been a happy, you know, a happy lady,” Henriquez said.

Inevitably, the elephant in the room – politics – comes up. At a press conference, Marsalis was asked about relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

He sidestepped the issue, saying essentially that’s not his job. “You know, could I give you a barbershop, stand on the street corner, yeah, that’s what I think? Of course I could do that. But put me in the position to have to solve it, all of a sudden – like my daddy used to say, you’d be lookin’ at a football game or something. You comment on what somebody shoulda done. He’d say, ‘I’ve seen you play ball.’ That’s all you gotta say,” he said.

There is no official diplomatic recognition of Cuba, but there is something called the “United States Interests Section,” housed in the old U.S. embassy, with about 50 State Department employees – sort of non-diplomat diplomats exercising both very quiet and sometimes very melodious diplomacy.

At the old U.S. ambassador’s residence, there was a party for Marsalis and company and Cuban musicians and artists, hosted by the “non-ambassador ambassador.” Call it cultural diplomacy, no rhetoric allowed.

Havana itself has become an exquisite corpse: a gorgeous city in ruins, from neglect, poverty, the cruel salt air. The capital of an island too broke, too distracted by shifting priorities and political jockeying to do much about it.

Still, the country is much more than yet another graveyard of the failed socialist experiment. The Cuban psyche is so deeply rooted in music that in a way, politics become irrelevant. At the national school of music, Marsalis and the kids were all in the same groove.

For this new generation, political freedom may be on hold, but musical freedom is still a wondrous thing.

“You(‘ve) talked about how music transcends politics. Do you see that in Cuba, that the music has some, I don’t know, liberating effect, or what?” Safer asked.

“I see that about music and the arts everywhere. Because we create community. And we speak to the human soul,” Marsalis explained.

It’s always dangerous to draw sweeping conclusions from events like this. Suffice it to say, that with the Jazz at Lincoln Center band in town, for five nights, Cuba and the United States were speaking the same language.

Washington, DC – The National Endowment for the Arts and Jazz at Lincoln Center announced today that the sold out NEA Jazz Masters Awards Ceremony & Concert on January 11, 2011, will be video streamed live for those unable to attend in person. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. EST and can be accessed through arts.gov.

In addition, a live audio broadcast will be carried through three outlets: Sirius XM Satellite Radio’s Real Jazz Channel 70, WBGO radio on 88.3FM or wbgo.org, and at NPR Music (npr.org/music).

The NEA Jazz Masters Awards Ceremony & Concert honors the recipients of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award-the nation’s highest honor in this distinctly American music. The 2011 NEA Jazz Masters are Hubert Laws, David Liebman, Johnny Mandel, and the Marsalis Family-Ellis Marsalis, Jr., Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Delfeayo Marsalis, and Jason Marsalis. In addition, the 2011 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy is awarded to Orrin Keepnews.

The Awards Ceremony & Concert will feature the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in a program dedicated to the honorees’ works; honorees Mr. Liebman, Mr. Laws, and the Marsalis Family will perform. The evening also will feature a special performance by Roberta Gambarini and others in honor of the Jazz Masters who have passed away in the last year: Hank Jones, Abbey Lincoln, James Moody, and Dr. Billy Taylor.

The concert is sold out but stand-by tickets will be distributed on January 11, with the line beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, Broadway at 60th Street, ground floor. Those who do not receive a ticket are invited to watch the concert via simulcast at Frederick P. Rose Hall.

Please see below for a full list of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters events open to the press:

MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 2011

1:00 – 2:00 p.m.*
Panel discussion with 2011 NEA Jazz Masters led by A.B. Spellman- This event is free to the public on a first come, first served basis. Doors open at 12:45 pm.

Location: The Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio in the Irene Diamond Education Center, Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street.

Please note: This event will also be webcast and can be accessed through arts.gov.

* NOTE THE NEW TIME FOR THIS EVENT

TUESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2011

6:30 – 7:00p.m.
Photo Opportunity with 2011 NEA Jazz Masters plus more than 30 previously-recognized NEA Jazz Masters. (See attached list.) Open to press only.

Location: The Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio in the Irene Diamond Education Center, Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street.

7:30 – 9:30 p.m.
NEA Jazz Masters Awards Ceremony & Concert.

Location: Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street.

Please note: This event will also be webcast and can be accessed through arts.gov.

For interviews with the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters or to attend any of the events listed above, please contact Liz Stark at 202-682-5744 or starke@arts.gov.

The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector. To join the discussion on how art works, visit the NEA at arts.gov.

About NEA Jazz Masters: NEA Jazz Masters are selected from nominations submitted by the public and receive a one-time fellowship award of $25,000, are honored at a public awards ceremony, and may participate in NEA-sponsored promotional, performance, and educational activities. Only living musicians or jazz advocates may be nominated for the NEA Jazz Masters honor.

The National Endowment for the Arts has supported jazz artists and organizations since 1969, providing millions of dollars in grants and awards. In 2004, the NEA significantly expanded its NEA Jazz Masters program and in 2005 created the NEA Jazz Masters Initiative, a comprehensive program of jazz support that includes the NEA Jazz Masters Award; NEA Jazz Masters Live, a series of performance and educational engagements in selected communities, featuring NEA Jazz Masters; radio programming featuring NEA Jazz Masters; educational resources through the NEA Jazz in the Schools program produced by the Arts Endowment in partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center; and publications and reports. For more information on NEA Jazz Masters, the public is invited to visit the website, at neajazzmasters.org.

Big Band: “Big Train”
JAZZ musicians all used to tour by train, and if Wynton had his way — here’s a little secret, he hates flying — they still would. With Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and the late 20th century’s big Trane — John Coltrane, that is — as spiritual engineers and conductors, Wynton and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra invite you to join their gang of rail riders on a journey that crisscrosses the landscape of America transported by its greatest art form, jazz.

Septet: “The Marciac Suite”
A sonic photo album in 13 movements, all 12 keys, and four time signatures, this 76 minute suite is Wynton’s kaleidoscopic tribute to the beautiful medieval town of Marciac, France, and its August jazz festival in which he participates every year. Written for his septet, the suite captures the varied, bracing flavors of Marciac’s paté (including the duck that got away), its armagnac, its striking sunflower fields and, most of all, the hospitality and soulfulness of its people.

Quartet: “The Magic Hour”
Those final minutes of the day, when parents everywhere are trying to get restless kids to settle down and go to bed, are what Wynton Marsalis calls “the magic hour.” Wynton says: “When they know they’re getting ready to go to bed, it’s like they go crazy. Then you have to put the blues on them to calm them down. Then when you calm them down, you can get into a groove… Then you read them the little bedtime story. Everything calms down and then they go ahead and go to sleep. That’s why it’s magic.”

Major Work: “All Rise”
ALL RISE is an extraordinary, massive work on the scale of Marsalis’ 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio BLOOD ON THE FIELDS. Performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and a 100-voice choir, ALL RISE reaches across styles and genres, from jazz and blues to classical and world music.

Classical: “In Gabriel’s Garden”
The sumptuous acoustic environment of St. Giles Cripplegate in London, a baroque church where John Milton, the author of PARADISE LOST, was once the organist, was the recording studio for this wide-ranging tour of baroque music by French, English, Italian, and German composers, including Henry Purcell, Giuseppe Torelli, and J.S. Bach. The sessions were so exhilarating, conductor Anthony Newman reports, that the soloists and orchestra “stayed up well into the night discussing the day’s work.” One listen, and you’ll understand why they were too excited to fall asleep.