[Dixielandjazz] New Orleans Jazz Orchestra

[Charles Suhor]

Ratliff's review makes me wish that I had been there to hear the 
concert without the web of associations that he spins. He makes it 
clear that he's looking at Mayfield through the lens of Wynton, the 
N.O. Jazz Orchestra through the lens of the Lincoln Center band, and 
the concert hall setting through another set of preconceived ideas. The 
band might be better or worse than he describes but we have a right to 
wonder whether he was listening to what happened, or preoccupied with 
making hip notes about how the band compares to others that he knows. 
Comparison is fair game, but most of the review seems to rely on it. 
Also, his description of Los Hombres Calientes as "a likable, 
historically literate party band" is the ultimate in damning with faint 
praise. I heard the band live at a concert in Montgomery, and one can 
shake one's butt to the great rhythms but can also take the group 
seriously as a fine Latin jazz band, I usually like Ratliff's writing 
but I think he got a bit too hiply contextual here and didn't seem to 
be opening up to the experience of the band.

Charlie

  On Apr 16, 2005, at 8:27 AM, Steve barbone wrote:

> 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.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dixielandjazz mailing list
> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
>