Thursday, March 22, 2007

"Tales from the 'Hood," Jon Garelick on Wynton Marsalis

Giant_wynton_untitled
Is that an aircraft hangar he's standing in or a REALLY big club?

Jon Garelick ruminates in today's Boston Phoenix on Wynton Marsalis, mostly covering his new CD, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary, but also the legacy of performers he has inspired, his politics, etc. He even manages to get in our Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton concert next Wednesday at Symphony Hall. All in all, a thorough outing from Jon. Here's a taste:



"From the beat of the first hand-slapped tambourine, you know who you’re listening to. For all the cries back in the bad old days about how conservative his music was, what was true then is true now: no one sounds like Wynton Marsalis, and he doesn’t sound like anyone else. Looking back at his "Live at Blues Alley" (Columbia, 1988), critic Ben Ratliff pointed out that the music was accessible rather than obscure — “Yet if a traveling musician from an earlier generation of jazz were plopped down in the middle of one of these burnout tunes and asked to hang in there, he’d be at sea."

Here's the rest of Tales from the 'hood.



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