Stage Talk with Rick Koster
Where every show has something to say.
Quick! Wynton’s coming! And he’s bringing the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
Now is no time to be humble. Let’s be frank: the Garde has hosted a stunning number of world-class artists because, well, that’s part of the idea behind a committed community-minded arts center with wild dreams!
However, this is huge.
Wait! Let’s use all-caps for this. It’s HUGE.
Hmm. Still not good enough.
HUGE! HUGE! HUGE!
That’s much better.
On June 27, we’re welcoming the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis to the Garde Stage.
The concert is part of a commemoration of what will be Marsalis’s final season as Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Marsalis has done a wonderful job at Lincoln Center since he took the gig in 1987, and this band contains 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players currently breathing on our planet. Their repertoire is vast and exhilarating and rife with possibilities and passion.
Marsalis, of course, is the esteemed eldest son of jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis. Marsalis the Younger was raised in New Orleans, studied the architecture of jazz music in its context of having spontaneously combusted at the turn of the 20th century — and he continues to utilize that sonic DNA to extrapolate the form through its progressions and blast it into the future.
Marsalis’s tone, musical vocabulary, melodic and polyphonic vision, joyful approach to improvisation and a lockjaw sense of ensemble groove are all anchored in an innate curiosity about how jazz serves as an aesthetic on ramp to other music styles.
And, if you’re tired of Music Speak, how’s this? I don’t care what sort of tunes you enjoy listening to — or that you worry “jazz” might give you a headache. Forget that. Be at the Garde to see this ensemble because they’ll conjure Art before your eyes and ears in that “Oh my God, how did they do that?” fashion.
Right here in your home ballpark, so to speak.
Speaking of the Garde and Marsalis, it was almost exactly 25 years ago the trumpeter gave one of the finest speeches I’ve ever heard — here in New London. He delivered the Commencement Address at Connecticut College and, as a coda to his wise observations, which I guarantee you the Class of 2001 remember with fondness and gratitude to this day, he raised his horn to his lips and played a short burst of tonal divinity.
And in terms of commemorative connectiveness, how about: The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis is an ideal way for the Garde to not only kick off our own Centennial Celebration but also joyfully acknowledge, on our nation’s 250th Birthday, jazz as one of America’s finest creations across any spectrum.
We’ll have more for you as the concert draws closer. In the meantime, here are a few tidbits of Marsalis-ness you can ponder:
- One of the dozens of esteemed awards Marsalis has received was the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Music. It commemorated his oratorio Blood on the Fields, about the history of slavery from the perspective of two main characters and was the first Pulitzer not presented to a classical composer.
- Marsalis is the author of several books including a memoir titled Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life — in which we learn that, if you should see his tour bus pulled to the side of the road near a playground, he is NOT to be trifled with on the basketball court.
- If you’re just checking Marsalis out, know he’s fond of exploring various music themes over the course of several albums. The six-volume Standard Times series, for example, is a whole history of Jazz through the Wyntonian prism. And a three-disc set, Soul Gestures in Southern Blue, is a marvelous and reflective immersion into and expansion beyond the blues as per pioneers like Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton. He’s also Santa-hatted his way into winter with three holiday albums!
- I sat down with Wynton several years ago for an interview just before he delivered the commencement speech at Connecticut College. He was thoughtful, polite and endured my perhaps painful layperson’s questions with patience and quick flashes of humor.
And I’ll tell you one thing: the dude knows how to wear a suit!
I was dressed reasonably for a journalist on assignment: khaki slacks and a golf shirt — but in the presence of Marsalis’s quietly elegant sartorial splendor, I was struck with the eerie idea that he might wake up every morning of his life already dressed like that! Like, it just happens because he’s Wynton Marsalis. I’ll tell you this: if Marsalis ever tires of being great as a trumpeter, scholar, educator, advocate, composer and bandleader, he can easily be hired to pen a monthly “How to Dress Like Me” column for GQ.