Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 18, 1993 TAG: 9311170041
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The young trumpeter won two of his eight Grammy Awards for classical albums; and his most recent CD, "On the Twentieth Century," features contemporary classical pieces. But when he brings his Wynton Marsalis Septet to Radford University's Preston Auditorium tonight at 8, the subject will be jazz and nothing but.
In a telephone interview, Marsalis said he is totally involved in jazz now and has no plans at the moment to record more classical repertoire.
That's bad news for classical lovers, to whom Marsalis may look like a brilliant comet that streaked across the sky before departing for other solar systems.
But it's good news for the world of jazz, which was reinvigorated by the appearance of Marsalis's phenomenally successful first album in 1982, recorded when he was only 18.
"Jazz musicians traditionally studied things about classical music, and I don't know when that stopped," said Marsalis.
"That's how you produce musicians like James P. Johnston, Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins - he grew up playing the cello - and Charles Mingus. They grew up studying and playing classical music, so that's a part of the jazz tradition.
"For me playing classical music was always fun because I liked the way [French trumpet virtuoso] Maurice Andre sounded, and I wanted to play like him," said Marsalis.
The French trumpeter once said, rather wistfully perhaps, that Marsalis could have been the greatest classical trumpeter who ever lived if he had chosen to concentrate his efforts in that sphere.
But Marsalis insists that he's chosen what is, in fact, the more difficult art form. "A piece like the Brandenburg Concerto is difficult anyway. But the thing is, the technique, there's a limit to it. It's difficult to play the Brandenburg Concerto, but it'd be impossible to play Dizzy Gillespie's solo."
You mean with classical technique?
"No, with any technique. Nobody can do it, because he pushed the instrument to another limit, to another level. The type of song that Clifford Brown would play, the way Cootie Williams played, these are like modern techniques.
"So I can play something very difficult in classical music, but there's nothing written that'll be as difficult as the stuff I was playing on the `Live at Blues Alley' album, because I was making it up. And when I'm in the process of making it up, I'm stretching the technique to the very outer limits of what I can possibly think of.
"And since I play the instrument all the time, my conception of what the instrument can do is much different than what a composer's would be," said Marsalis.
When Marsalis exploded onto the jazz scene in 1982, the jazz world was ready for a new trumpet superstar. Bebop legend Miles Davis had moved into rock-influenced electric funk, a development which had alienated some of his hard-core jazz fans.
Marsalis lists Davis as only one of his influences and not the most important. "I was listening to Clifford Brown, Miles, but it was Freddie Hubbard, mainly. In the '70s everybody was listening to Freddie Hubbard.
"When I first came out everybody said I sounded like Miles, but that was only because I played with Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams. I guess I did sound like Miles, but it was more like a combination of Miles and Freddie and Clifford."
As somebody who has achieved success in both classical music and jazz, Marsalis says he believes the latter form meshes more closely with the realities of American life in the '90s.
"Classical music always seemed more harmonious to me, more homogeneous. It's about a different time in the world, what I would call harmony through harmony.
"Jazz is about harmony through conflict, so it's more about modern life, a much more modern and serious art form. It's much more difficult to learn, and it seems like it has much more to do with American society and culture."
The trumpeter's most recent jazz release is a direct attempt to interpret one aspect of American life through jazz. "Citi Movement" is the 132-minute score to choreographer Garth Fagan's modern dance work "Griot New York."
It's Marsalis's most ambitious project to date, and only his second outing as a composer of long-form jazz works. "I've always been interested in form," said Marsalis. "In jazz it's the chorus form: one chorus on top of another, call-and-response choruses, riff choruses. So it's not really a change of gears all that much."
In a few weeks Marsalis will take a break from his current tour to participate in an unusual recording experiment. On Dec. 6 he will produce an acoustic wax cylinder recording at the Edison National Historic Site. The project is intended to capture the ambience of acoustic recordings during the early golden age of jazz when giants such as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton making the music's first classic recordings.
Marsalis said he'll probably perform some of the pieces he wrote for "Citi Movement" when the band plays in Radford tonight. There's only been one personnel change in the Septet since the album was released in January: Walter Blanding Jr. has replaced Todd Williams on tenor sax.
Other performers are Wes Anderson on alto sax, Wycliffe Gordon on trombone, Reginald Veal on bass, Herlin Riley on drums and Eric Reed on piano.
by CNB