Wynton Century

With tour de force performances on both trumpet and cornet of music ranging from the Baroque, through the Classical era, and into the 20th century, this “Portrait” illustrates the extraordinary diversity of Wynton Marsalis’ classical repertory. Marsalis recorded each of these works between 1982 (when he was just 21 years old) and 1987. The 1982 recording of Hummel’s Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra in E-flat Major comes from his fist classical album, which won Marsalis a Grammy for Best Classical Performance – Instrumental Soloist(s) with Orchestra.

In the summer of 2008 multiple Grammy award winning jazz artist Wynton Marsalis and his quintet teamed-up with French accordionist Richard Galliano at the annual Jazz in Marciac festival in Southern France to pay tribute to the late jazz legends Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf. The result is a live recording, CD/DVD deluxe combination that captures this magical performance by two modern legends. The album, entitled The Wynton Marsalis Quintet & Richard Galliano - From Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf: Live in Marciac, captures the magical 9-song set list translating classic jazz vocal compositions into artful instrumental versions that are striking in their rhythmic variety…

Jazz buffs are very familiar with Wynton Marsalis and his trumpet. Opera lovers know the quality voice of lyrical soprano Kathleen Battle. A perfect blending of these two performers, in the Baroque music, has been acheived in this CD. The match of human voice and trumpet seems to us, at the end of the Twenth Century, a mismatch. But to quote Ellen T. Harris, who wrote the liner notes, "The real and sympolic power of the trumpet makes its combination with the quieter instruments and voice seems, at first, imbrobable, but a softer sweeter style of playing in the high ("clarino") register was typical in art music for the trumpet…". Sounds simple enough, but Wynton is one of the few players who can do it well. So well in fact, that at several points Kathleen's voice and Wynton's trumpet blend into one voice, a balanced singularity, even duplicating each others vibrato exactly. A truely amazing accomplishment, which can only be fully appreciated by listening; but once you hear this glorious sound, you'll want to upgrade your stero system to capture its fullness…

By A Customer

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and special guests take you through 100 years of jazz piano on their new album, Handful of Keys. Star pianists Joey Alexander, Dick Hyman, Myra Melford, Helen Sung, Isaiah J. Thompson, and the JLCO’s own Dan Nimmer grab hold of all 88 keys and reveal the full extent of the piano’s evolution over the 20th century. This landmark live performance will be released on 9/15/17 by Blue Engine Records.

Recorded in the 1920s, Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Hot Sevens sides are still hailed as some of the greatest and most influential jazz sessions ever captured; musicians obsess over their warmth, wit, and joy to this day. A new live recording by Wynton Marsalis — another acclaimed New Orleans trumpeter— reimagines classics from those sessions like “Basin Street Blues,” “St. James Infirmary,” and “Heebie Jeebies” for a whole new generation of audiences.

Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis' first forays into classical music in the 1980s were celebrated as some kind of unique breakthrough, but that overlooked the fact that Marsalis was classically trained at the Juilliard School, absorbed all kinds of traditions, and has always had aspirations in the classical sphere. Credit Marsalis with broad ambitions when he turns to classical composition, as in his Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio Blood on the Fields (1997), and again here with a Violin Concerto and Fiddle Dance Suite, written for violinist Nicola Benedetti. Both works are impressive, not least in their idiomatic writing for the violin; they flatter Benedetti considerably.