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He hit the shed hard, and focused on classical repertoire to increase his scope. Marsalis’ personal charisma, conceptual flair and pop culture cred from proximity to Sting and Spike Lee persuaded jazz-ignorant audiences to applaud his every move, and his superb, insouciant musicianship attracted a generation of aspirants.Ĭomparing the ’89 Vanguard document to Braggtown’s polymath erudition testifies to Marsalis’ personal evolution after leaving Leno in 1996. All members possessed formidable chops, and could swing with the best, a quality less evident on their studio recordings than on a 1989 bootleg of a tradition-centric set by the quartet at the Village Vanguard. When Tain and Wynton split, I was waiting for him.įrom 1988 to 1992, when Marsalis brought his troops to Los Angeles to form the core of Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” house band, the quartet was the hottest band in hardcore jazz. When Wynton started his band, I thought Tain would be more effective than Smitty for the music he was playing, and I told him to hire Tain. #Esperanza spalding torrent discography beatles how toHe knew how to play different time signatures, played ideas through them, and you always knew where the beat was. I was listening to Lester Young and Wayne Shorter, and he had just started listening to Elvin Jones, but his sensibility came out of fusion. “But I gravitated toward him immediately. “A lot of people thought Tain was unorthodox, and didn’t like to play with him,” he said. I live on 30th Street, right down from the train station.’ Me, Victor Bailey, Donald Harrison, Smitty Smith, Lance Bryant, maybe a couple of other people, got on the train, went to New York and rang his doorbell.’ We had our jam session with Kenny Kirkland.”Īround this time, Marsalis, whose Berklee roommates included drummers Marvin Smitty Smith and Gene Jackson, met Jeff Watts. ![]() I must have sounded like the biggest hick-I mean, in terms of my diction and dialect. We want to come play with you,’” he continued. You might have heard of my brother, Wynton Marsalis, who’s in New York. “‘Hey, Kenny Kirkland, my name’s Branford Marsalis. “My next-door neighbor knew him, and I got his number and called. “I’d heard Kenny play with Angie Bofill when I was at Berklee, and was talking about how bad he was,” he reminisced. #Esperanza spalding torrent discography beatles seriesMarsalis responded to a series of questions about Kirkland’s idiosyncracies, musicianship, position on the piano influence tree and self-destructive habits that eventually killed him in October 1998.īack at the hotel, Marsalis returned to the subject. Then he sat for an interview with a student researching a thesis on Kenny Kirkland, the pianist in the quartet’s first edition, which coalesced in 1988. For the next hour, he addressed a slew of topics-practice procedures, the art of record-making, current favorites, how he filters non-jazz styles into his conception. The master class transpired in a quasi-amphitheater with a giant pipe organ, in front of which Marsalis sat on a bench and, without ceremony, asked for questions. ![]() For another, as evidenced on Braggtown (Marsalis Music), the quartet’s most recent release, it’s a singular unit, able to generate and sustain seamless, organic dialogue through an array of emotional and structural environments-affirmative blues connotations (“Jack Baker”) lyric tone poems (“Hope”) and Euro-Classic homages (“Fate” and “O Solitude”) inflamed spirit talk (“Black Elk Speaks”) kinetic, complex Afro-diasporic rhythms (“Blackzilla”). For one thing, the quartet plays the New York area infrequently, and the Pepsico Theater, the world-class facility on campus, was almost sold out. This circumstance would be fascinating, but unfortunate. “We’ll play duo if we have to,” he remarked. The roads had not flooded, and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, a Brooklynite, was driving up. Striding across an open mezzanine to the music building with neither a hat nor an umbrella, he was sanguine and philosophical. Having arrived the night before, Marsalis practiced for an hour or so before catching a ride through the downpour to nearby SUNY-Purchase to lead an 11 a.m. Airline delays jeopardized the arrival of bassist Eric Revis, who lives in San Antonio, and pianist Joey Calderazzo, who lives in North Carolina, not far from Marsalis.Īlready it had been a busy day. Outside, the rain came down in torrents, as it had throughout the morning. ![]() The saxophonist sat on his hotel room floor in White Plains, N.Y., slicing a grapefruit and an apple. “It’s important to have cats who can push you and let you express yourself through the music, to actually play anything you want,” said Branford Marsalis, the afternoon of his quartet’s first concert gig of 2008. For Branford Marsalis’ birthday, here’s the final cut of a DownBeat feature that I wrote about him in 2008, and a Downbeat Blindfold Test that we did in 2002.ĭownbeat Feature on Branford Marsalis, 2008: ![]()
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