Tag Archives: Florida

Roberts performs dizzying jazz tribute to Jelly Roll Morton

Somewhere out there, Jelly Roll Morton is smiling

by Mark Hinson
Tallahasee Democrat
February 18, 2013

Everything old really is new again.

Jazz piano great Marcus Roberts started his tribute to New Orleans jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton on Sunday night at Seven Days of Opening Nights with introductory remarks that also served as fair warning to what was about to happen on the stage.

“When people think of Jelly Roll Morton, they think, ‘old,’ ” Roberts said as he got comfortable at his grand piano. “He is not old. We are not going to let that happen. His music is new. Especially if you have never heard it.”

During the first half of the concert, The Marcus Roberts Trio and a seven-piece horn section tore through new arrangements of Morton tunes such as “Doctor Jazz” and “The Pearls” with an enthusiastic precision that was, at times, jaw-dropping.

The highlight of the first half was “New Orleans Bump,” which featured a new arrangement by Roberts’ trumpet player Alphonso Horne (yes, horn is in his last name). The song may have been written in the Roaring Twenties but it sounded fresh and new as Horne pumped it full of strutting swagger. The arrangement also left plenty of room for Roberts to take off on a wild improvisation that was so full of charging rhythms and counter-rhythms that it could cause dizziness.

Remember the name Horne, who studied jazz at Florida State College of Music with Roberts as one of his professors. Horne has a big future in front of him.

The crowd of 710 in Ruby Diamond Concert Hall let out whoops and “wows” throughout the evening, whether it was for trills on the clarinet or a mind-bending improv from Roberts that sounded like boogie-woogie from another planet. Anyone expecting a stodgy museum piece or dry recreation of a Dixieland band was sadly mistaken.

The band lineup included Jason Marsalis on drums, Rodney Jordan on bass, Tim Blackman Jr. on trumpet, Jeremiah St. John on trombone, Joe Goldberg on clarinet, Tissa Khosla on baritone, Ricardo Pascal on saxophone and Stephen Riley on tenor saxophone. The concert had been billed as an octet but, hey, who cares if you add a few more players when they are this good?

Morton, who got his start playing in the brothels in his hometown of New Orleans, was a flamboyant figure who claimed he invented jazz. That may or may not be true, but he certainly was the first musician to sit down and notate the rambunctious new music of the 20th century. He also rubbed a lot of the other musicians the wrong way with his bragging and his flash (he had a diamond tooth), so that is probably why he was not well remembered when he died in near-poverty in the early ’40s.

While the party-hearty Morton may not have made it to the Pearly Gates after his death, he was definitely smiling his diamond-tooth smile somewhere in the great beyond on Sunday night.

Roberts, who turns 50 this year, is no stranger to the Seven Days. He and his group put on a memorable show with jazz singer Dianne Reeves a few years ago. Anyone who saw his reinvention of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” at Seven Days probably wondered how he could top that performance.

He just did.

The Seven Days of Opening Nights continues today with a screening of a film that was hand-picked by Tribeca Film Festival honcho Geoffrey Gilmore. The title is being withheld until showtime at 8 p.m. It is sold out.

School Jazz Band Gets Its Groove On

Music master Jason Marsalis helps students hone chops for competition

by Kia Hall Hayes
New Orleans Times-Picayune
March 6, 2008

Gearing up for a national competition next month, the Fontainebleau High School Jazz Band on Wednesday got a visit from a music master and a lesson on “the groove.”

The band has been invited to compete with 11 other bands in the Swing Central Jazz Band Competition, which is being held April 3-5 during the Savannah Music Festival in Georgia. Band Director Lee Hicks said it will be biggest competition in which the 20-member band has participated.
“Some of (the schools) are very well-known,” Hicks said, citing the New World School of the Arts in Miami, Fla. “We’re not going up against lightweights.”

To help the participants, the festival organizers dispatched professional musicians to rehearse with the various bands and offer constructive criticism. Jason Marsalis — a son of jazz great Ellis, brother of fellow musicians Wynton, Branford and Delfeayo, and a member of the Marcus Roberts Trio — was assigned to Fontainebleau.

A jazz drummer, Marsalis has played with world-renowned musicians such as Joe Henderson and Lionel Hampton and co-founded the Latin jazz group Los Hombres Calientes. In addition to playing on numerous group recordings, Marsalis has two albums under his name and continues to play with his famous family.

Hicks, who plays professionally with the John Mahoney Big Band in New Orleans, said he hoped Marsalis, who also is one of the competition judges, would help “improve the groove.”
“Just to get another opinion on how to make the music feel better,” he said.

Hicks said competing with accomplished music programs and receiving feedback from musicians such as Marsalis will be a valuable learning experience for the band, which won the Fiesta-Val Music Festival in Chicago, Ill., last year. The winning band will receive up to $5,000 for its school’s program.

To raise money for the trip, the Fontainebleau Jazz Band will perform with local musicians in a benefit concert at the high school on March 14 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10.

Jazz pianist Ben Alleman, 17, said he was excited about Marsalis’ visit. He has seen the world-renowned drummer and his father perform in New Orleans and bought the Ellis Marsalis Quartet compact disc.

Alleman was grateful for the performance advice from someone of Marsalis’ pedigree.
“The groove,” he said, is very important for jazz bands. “That’s what gets the people up and gets them dancing,” he said.

Jazz guitar player Sam Chin, 16, said “the groove” is kind of like “the Force.”

If you feel it, you feel good,” he said. “It’s like ‘clean.’ It’s something you feel when you play well.”

Marsalis wasted no time getting band members attuned to his directives.

Bobbing his head along as the band rehearsed Jerome Richardson’s “Groove Merchant,” Marsalis had the different sections of the band work on shortening and then broadening their notes. He encouraged “flexibility with the rhythm” that they embraced.

“The name of the piece is ‘Groove Merchant,’ and that’s what you guys are going to have to do, is groove,” he said.

After having the reed, brass and percussion sections go through the piece separately, and at one point jumping on the drums and playing with band, Marsalis had the young musicians play the song together.

Heads bobbed, and toes tapped. The 1968 song was full of swing, bounce and brass.
In a word, it grooved.

Marsalis said the song sounded better, and that the broadening of the notes had helped.
Hicks said he noticed a definite improvement.

“I mean the groove wasn’t bad before, but I think the groove is going to get even better,” he said.

Jason Marsalis’s T.O. headlining debut

Career delayed by Hurricane Katrina, brother Jason back on track with vibes, drums

by Ashante Infantry
Toronto Star
January 10, 2008

His home only suffered minor damage, but 2005’s Hurricane Katrina had a more consequential impact on Jason Marsalis’s career.

The drummer-vibist, the youngest of the four performing Marsalis brothers, had big plans that fall for the record label he runs with his pianist-educator dad.

“He was going to put a record out, I was going to come out with something; Katrina just wiped all that out,” said Marsalis, 30, in a recent phone interview from his renovated New Orleans home.

Even if the devastating storm hadn’t uprooted them – Marsalis to Jacksonville, Fla., then New York, his parents to Baton Rouge, La. – and focused their attention and finances elsewhere, recording just wasn’t feasible.

“Musicians and engineers that I was going to use, they were all over the place. The studio we used to record at was gone. Fortunately, none of the music got lost, but that kind of delayed things for a few years.”

With only a couple CDs under his own name, Marsalis, who has proven an adept sideman, accompanying the likes of pianist Marcus Roberts, saxist John Ellis and trombonist brother Delfeayo, makes his Toronto headlining debut at Trane Studio tomorrow night to kick off the inaugural Fair Trade Organic Coffee Jazz Concert Series.

The musician, who teaches fulltime at the renowned New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, began playing drums professionally at 14 and has also been performing on vibes since 2000.

“It was actually my father’s idea to explore it, because it was melodic percussion. It’s a very challenging instrument. If you miss one note it sticks out a lot more than any other instrument.”

He’ll play two separate Toronto shows, one on drums, the other on vibes, in sets comprised of standards and originals.

“One of the things I’m going to try to develop over time is music that has not been played on vibes, but sounds great on the instrument,” he said, citing compositions by drummer Winard Harper and a Brazilian musician.

The Crescent City resident credits his hometown for nurturing his musical explorations.
“In New Orleans, I could just start doing a gig every Monday and this is when I was not good at all. I could just do a gig at a small place on a Monday night with not a lot of publicity, no major reviews … just start playing, and then after while I started gigging with other people in the city.”

He describes a small, vibrant music enclave that he’s never felt the need to decamp for bigger parts to benefit his music or career.

“There was always a lot of opportunity in New Orleans for me. Plus, I was already travelling a lot anyway, so I was never interested in living somewhere else,” he says.

“I’m going to be honest, and this is probably controversial, but someone needs to say it: Really, New York being the big time as far as jazz music is concerned is actually over, because the major labels aren’t signing jazz and a lot of the jazz legends that were in New York, unfortunately, have died off now.

“It’s a great city and there’s a lot of music, but it’s not what it used to be. Ironically enough though, New Orleans is a better learning town. The community is a little smaller and it’s easier to get around and there’s other music that you can learn, like a lot of the traditional jazz music, R&B, Brazilian and Afro-Cuban music. Those kinds of things go on here. New Orleans has always been a great learning town.”