[Dixielandjazz] New Orleans Jazz Orchestra

[Steve barbone]

I guess Ben Ratliff was not impressed. (see below)

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


April 16, 2005 - NY TIMES - By BEN RATLIFF
NEW ORLEANS JAZZ ORCHESTRA

New Orleans Looseness, Tightly Orchestrated
 
Three years ago, the young trumpeter Irvin Mayfield formed the New Orleans
Jazz Orchestra at Dillard University. The band's mandate is New
Orleans-centrism in both its past and present meanings; in fact, more
present than past. 

Mr. Mayfield, who's still only 27, has usually come through New York with
Los Hombres Calientes, a likable, historically literate party band that
makes the connections among the parade rhythms and funk of different New
World cultures. On Thursday, he started a three-night run at Rose Hall's
Allen Room with the 16-piece New Orleans Orchestra. This band has a
different sound and a slightly different intent, and it tried to square the
too-much-is-never-enough mindset of its hometown with orchestrated parts and
music stands. It also faced the challenge of making that casual magic work
in an opulent New York culture palace.

Mr. Mayfield's band was transmitting New Orleans frequencies, but the
signals were jammed. The program was about half an hour too long, and Mr.
Mayfield presented an overload of his own compositions. His pieces quickly
established a mood: slow-motion, heatstroke romance in "Ballad of the Hot,
Long Night"; the all-comers-welcome jazz soloists' cutting contest in
"Hoopin' and Hollerin' "; an old New Orleans parade in "The Elder Negro
Speaks." 

But after nailing down the basic idea, the solos went on and on and on. In a
bar, this is potentially effective: social situations create their own
momentum, and the band keeps it rolling. In a quiet theater, the
string-of-solos mode can get you well acquainted with your watch.

Wynton Marsalis is one of Mr. Mayfield's mentors, and the men have some
close similarities. Mr. Mayfield doesn't have his elder's clarity and power
as a trumpeter, but he has annexed a lot of Mr. Marsalis's color and texture
in his improvising: the whinnying and whining and cackling, the
approximations of the voice. He's drawn, too, to the idea of tone poems that
suggest history and everyday culture; he wants to communicate without being
obscure, and he wants to demonstrate jazz's place in culture in the large
sense. 

To lead off the concert, the band reached backward, playing Duke Ellington's
"Such Sweet Thunder," proving its seriousness about older orchestral jazz.
(Its seriousness, but not yet its excellence: the piece is also in the
Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra's repertory, and that ensemble is in a
categorically different league.)

But the great asset of this band is New Orleans funk in all its New World
context. It wants to show the Cuban, Haitian and African elements in it, and
possibly even its Roman Catholic and Mardi Gras Indian elements. The outline
is there; the challenge now is in presenting it convincingly to different
kinds of audiences.

Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra will perform again tonight
at 7:30 at the Allen Room at Frederick P. Rose Hall, 60th Street and
Broadway, (212) 721-6500.