[Dixielandjazz] Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra meets Los Angeles Jazz

[Steve barbone]

>From Kid Ory to Gerald Wilson, with a lot left out. :-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve


A Visitor From the West Takes Charge of the Band

NY TIMES By BEN RATLIFF February 25, 2006

Gerald Wilson, the trumpeter, composer, arranger and conductor, is 87. On
Thursday at the Rose Theater, taking part in "Central Avenue Breakdown," a
Jazz at Lincoln Center concert centering on Los Angeles jazz, he hijacked
the evening. It was not his band, and not his city, but he handled the
15-member Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra like a paper airplane.

The concert's first part had been history-rich, admirably nondogmatic and,
as performance, a little dry. Led by Wynton Marsalis, it ranged from the
heavy-gauge work of auteurish bandleaders like Stan Kenton and Charles
Mingus to film-industry jobs (Henry Mancini's theme to "The Pink Panther,"
with the warm, fat-toned tenor saxophonist Plas Johnson, who recorded the
original version), to Kid Ory and Alex Hill, two jazz musicians and
composers of the 1920's who settled in Los Angeles.

But Mr. Wilson made the show an exclamation point. He stalked the front of
the stage, his white mane turned to the audience and his piercing eyes
trained on the band. His body was tuned to the music ‹ dislodging rich,
overstuffed harmonies of brass and reeds and quelling them, socking his
right fist into his left hand to drive the rhythm section harder, ending
songs crisply. He squeezed the potential out of the band and led it through
a set of his own music, written over the last 40 years, since he became a
bandleader for the second time in the 1960's.

Previous to that, in the 1950's, Mr. Wilson had gone behind the scenes ‹ as
an arranger for Duke Ellington, among others, but also in Hollywood. The
feeling of staff-orchestra jazz, a sound most Americans over 30 have in the
back of their heads from film and television, is central to Mr. Wilson's
work: his music is rich and driving, well tailored and swanky, full of
unfolding detail. (One of the pieces he played, "Jeri," recorded in 1961,
has a figure in its bridge that would be echoed a decade later in the theme
song to "The Price Is Right.") Like Ellington, his greatest influence, he
specializes in tone poems ‹ for family members, for places, for
bullfighters. And he respects the demands of popular art. He doesn't
overestimate your patience.

He likes bravado and encouraged Mr. Marsalis to show the audience what he
could do on trumpet. Mr. Marsalis was featured in "Carlos," a musical
portrait of the Mexican matador Carlos Arruza from the mid-60's with a tonal
atmosphere similar to that of the Gil Evans-Miles Davis album "Sketches of
Spain." 

Mr. Wilson gets his drama out of harmony and dynamics, and Mr. Marsalis rose
to the occasion, matching the tension of the piece with a tight solo, ending
with whistling glissando figures. Exhausted, he took a bow. "Mr. Marsalis
must take another bow," Mr. Wilson ordered, with a flourish. And he did.

"Central Avenue Breakdown" repeats tonight at 8 at the Rose Theater, 60th
Street and Broadway; (212) 721-6500