[Dixielandjazz] Jazz Review of Wynton With Strings - OKOM for some of us

[Steve barbone]

Some American Songbook here. Playing with strings seems never to generate
great enthusiasm among the critics, but the participating jazz musicians
always seemed to love it.

The Parker and Brown efforts with strings mentioned below were deemed not up
to snuff creatively by critics originally, though Parker and Brownie enjoyed
them. Likewise, Kenny Davern's album with strings (Bob Haggart Orch) never
gained great favor with "literati".

Too popular with regular music lovers perhaps? ;-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve 


Jazz Review | 'Wynton With Strings' - NY TIMES - By NATE CHINEN

Lincoln Center's Man With the Trumpet, With Orchestra 11/19/05

Just before the lights dimmed in the Rose Theater on Thursday night, a voice
announced that while the use of cellphones was prohibited, hand-clapping,
foot-stomping and cries of "Aw, yeah!" were all welcome forms of audience
participation. It was a hokier introduction than one might have expected
from a concert called "Wynton With Strings." But in a way, it suited both
subject and setting.

Wynton Marsalis has built his legend on the premise of an elevated yet
approachable music - America's Classical Music, let's say, but also an
incorrigibly down-home gumbo. His primary instrument, aside from the
trumpet, has been the apparatus of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which employs him
as artistic director in much the same way that Apple employs Steve Jobs as
chief executive. "Wynton With Strings" arrived several days after the
organization's fall gala, a black-tie affair that celebrated Mr. Marsalis's
25-year solo career, and reportedly raised nearly $2 million.

There's a certain middlebrow pleasure in the soloist-plus-strings equation,
which most famously yielded recordings by Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown.
Mr. Marsalis's Columbia albums in this vein - "Hot House Flowers" in 1984
and "Standard Time, Vol. 5: The Midnight Blues" in 1998 - self-consciously
strove for a more harmonious marriage of orchestration and improvisation.
The arrangements from those albums, by Robert Freedman, were the chief
substance of the concert, which featured Mr. Marsalis with his quintet and a
string orchestra conducted by Robert Sadin.

At best, the music fulfilled its implicit promise of romance. "For All We
Know" and "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year," which both came in the
stronger second half, provided Mr. Marsalis with vehicles for wistful
Technicolor balladry, and he indulged without going overboard. "Stardust,"
with its darkly tremulous arrangement, was even more powerful, and it
elicited Mr. Marsalis's most unassumingly virtuosic performance - though he
was nearly eclipsed by the tenor saxophonist Walter Blanding Jr., who used
Ben Webster's crooning tone as a touchstone in the evening's most gallant
entreaty. 

During other moments, an identity crisis appeared to take hold. "Guess I'll
Hang My Tears Out to Dry" was a hodgepodge, alternating between a chromatic
pedal point and a strangely unrelated slow swing section. "Django" began
with appealing grandeur but gave way to a basic blues. The orchestra and the
quintet never felt like a single entity, despite the fact that Mr. Sadin,
when he wasn't sculpturing air with his hands, often turned to the band to
stomp his feet (he'd heard the announcement) or approvingly grimace and
grunt. 

Such jubilation felt warranted on a pair of small-group pieces: Mr.
Marsalis's recent ditties "Free to Be" and "Big Fat Hen." But several blasts
from his past - "Caravan," "Just Friends" and "Cherokee" - featured the
strings in dimensionless arrangements that merely overlaid the quintet. Mr.
Marsalis sounded as crisp and confident as ever; the bright young talent in
his band seemed hampered by all the fuss.

"Wynton With Strings" repeats tonight at 8 at Rose Theater, Frederick P.
Rose Hall, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 751-6500.