[Dixielandjazz] Marsalis Family

[Bob Fawcett]

Not sure I would have enjoyed the show but they are certainally dedicated.
Article in the local paper in Ottawa ON Canada today.   ....Bob
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The storm before the calm, cool jazz
Bad weather, cancelled flights, late arrivals barely fazed the classy
Marsalis family

Doug Fischer
The Ottawa Citizen


Tuesday, February 25, 2003

CREDIT: Patrick Doyle, The Ottawa Citizen

Bad weather forced Branford Marsalis to charter a jet, at his own expense,
to make it to Sunday's concert with his father and brothers.


As she thought about it all again yesterday morning, Catherine O'Grady was
left with two strong impressions about the Marsalis family jazz concert
she'd brought to Ottawa Sunday night.

First, how close the weather came to ruining one of the biggest musical
events of the year. And how some of the biggest names in jazz saved the day
because they are a family, and a group of musical pros.

"These guys define the word professional," O'Grady, the executive producer
of the Ottawa International Jazz Festival, said with more than a bit of
admiration. "The concert happened because they wanted it to happen -- they
did it for their father and for the people who made it a sellout."

Even allowing for a little of O'Grady's usual Irish bluster, it seems the
performance of the Marsalis jazz family before their concert required as
much improvisation as the one they delivered from the stage of the National
Arts Centre.

Ottawa was the first stop on the family's first-ever tour together. Because
each of them -- pianist father Ellis, and sons Branford (saxophone), Wynton
(trumpet), Delfeayo (trombone), Jason (drums) and bassist Reginald Veal --
have their own busy careers, they agreed to meet in Ottawa Saturday.

That would give them time to see a Senators game from a special box at the
Corel Centre Saturday night -- they're all big sports fans -- and then spend
most of the next morning and afternoon in the rehearsal hall they had booked
for seven hours.

As it turned out, Ellis had the hall to himself.

The family patriarch arrived as planned from New Orleans on Saturday
morning. So did the concert technicians.

But the rest, coming in from points as distant as Japan, were held back by
the snow and winds that socked most of eastern North America Saturday
evening and into Sunday afternoon.

Branford, travelling from his home in North Carolina, was grounded Saturday
afternoon when a tornado closed the airport in Raleigh. His flight to Ottawa
via Toronto was rescheduled for the next day, but cancelled by the blizzard
in Canada. He was told no commercial flight could get him to Ottawa in time
for the concert.

Hearing the news Sunday afternoon around 3, O'Grady phoned Ellis in his
hotel room to ask whether he wanted to cancel the performance. He replied
that it would be a big loss but the rest could probably muster a decent show
minus a sax player. He suggested that O'Grady, as the promoter, should make
the final decision.

Given that Wynton was the only other family member to have made it to Ottawa
by then -- he was driven overnight through the blizzard from New York,
arriving around 6 a.m. -- O'Grady was ready to call it off.

Then came word from Raleigh that Branford had chartered a private jet -- at
his expense -- that would get him into Ottawa, with luck, by showtime.

"Once I heard he'd done that, I said, 'There's no way this concert is not
going to happen,' " O'Grady says. "I knew it would be close, but I was
confident we'd pull it off. He walked through the door at 7:50, 10 minutes
before it was to start." (It actually began at 8:15.)

With Branford was Veal, who had been scheduled to fly out of Atlanta on
Saturday but stayed put when Delta Airlines wouldn't let him on the plane
with his giant double-bass.

He switched to Air Canada and eventually managed to get to Toronto around
noon Sunday. But connecting flights to Ottawa were backed up and he was put
on -- and then taken off -- planes at 2:30, 4:30 and 5:17 before he finally
grabbed a flight that got him to Ottawa just before 7. Jazz festival staff
swooped up Veal and Branford, who arrived a short while later, and whisked
them to the NAC.

Jason, meanwhile, started his sojourn Friday in Japan. He flew from a gig in
Tokyo to Atlanta, where he was to meet Veal and head to Ottawa Saturday. The
flight was late, stranding Jason in Atlanta when airports in the north were
closed or choked up.

Jason eventually made it to Ottawa at 5 p.m. Sunday.

Delfeayo was stuck in Chicago -- the storm hit there early Saturday -- and
through a host of elaborately cobbled-together connections was able to get
to Ottawa around the same time Sunday afternoon.

To the blithely unaware folks waiting in their seats at the NAC, what all
the jockeying meant was a dramatic change in the music the Marsalis clan had
intended to rehearse and then play for them Sunday night.

Gone were a number of tunes requiring complex ensemble playing -- Branford's
Cassandra and Ellis's Nostalgic Impressions among them -- and added were
several standards that a collection of top-notch jazzmen like the Marsalises
can perform without rehearsal, and with panache.

The result was the kind of lively, varied set of 13 tunes you might expect
to hear dad and the boys call out and run through at a family gathering.

There was the intimate (Rodgers and Hart's tender It's Easy to Remember),
the rollicking (Jelly Roll Morton's Buddy Bolden's Blues and Alvin Batiste's
Mozart-in, both loaded with the chaotic romance of New Orleans) and some
swinging standards (All the Things You Are and If I Were a Bell).

The evening's most imaginative and fiery moments came during Ray Noble's
classic Cherokee and Wynton's early '80s tune Hesitation, each featuring the
trumpeter and Branford in some high-spirited brotherly blowing, as well as
some hard-edged bebop soloing from Ellis.

Similarly, the two brothers' adventurous playing on Thelonius Monk's
eccentric Evidence, rarely performed because of its rhythmic complexity and
bizarre opening pauses, was a reminder of why they remain among jazz's
creative forces.

The evening's only real downside came during the first two tunes -- Ellis's
Twelve's It and After -- which sounded uninspired and were kept alive only
by the some gritty digging into the beat by bassist Veal.

But given what came before, a few clunkers are forgivable and the two-song
encore more than generous. The show ended just before 11.