[Dixielandjazz] The 2007 - 08 Festival Mood at Lincoln Center

[Steve Barbone]

Lincoln Center has an ambitious program of theme based Festivals this coming
season. See write-up below:

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

March 7, 2007 - NY TIMES - By BEN RATLIFF

In the Mood for Festivals at Jazz at Lincoln Center

A theme of romance threads through the 2007-8 season for Jazz at Lincoln
Center, Wynton Marsalis, its artistic director, said in an interview
yesterday. 

Another theme, though unstated, might be consolidation. The schedule for the
season, from October to May, promises more of what has worked before:
festival programming by coordinating the booking of Rose Hall¹s three
performance spaces; a concert by the audience favorites Dave Brubeck and
Ramsey Lewis; the return of the ever-popular Duke Ellington to the repertory
rotation; more concerts of Afro-Cuban, Spanish, and Brazilian jazz hybrids;
and a few landmark concerts stemming from the gospel tradition, which seem
likely to generate audience interest.

But back to romance. In addition to the Valentine¹s Day concerts ‹ organized
into a festival in February, including an ³Ellington Love Songs² program at
Rose Theater and a concert by the singers Kurt Elling and Nancy King in the
Allen Room ‹ Mr. Marsalis said many of the season¹s concerts will have
³aspects of a man and a woman² in their programming. Among these are a
concert of new music commissioned from Frank Foster, the former Basie band
saxophonist and arranger, which will follow a love-story narrative; and a
singers-with-big-band show, ³Best of the Big Bands,² with Freddy Cole and
other vocalists. Presumably the Brazilian festival in May 2008, including
concerts by the bossa-nova singer Rosa Passos and the composer and performer
Ivan Lins, will contain some romance as well.

Last year Mr. Marsalis noted that the John Coltrane festival particularly
stood out as a success. In it Coltrane¹s music was approached from different
perspectives in different halls. So next season, he explained, there will be
more such programming. First will be the ³Golden Pen² festival, celebrating
jazz composition. The focus would be on Gil Evans, and the festival includes
three nights of his music ‹ ³the whole span of it,² Mr. Marsalis added, ³not
just what he did with Miles Davis² ‹ played by the Jazz at Lincoln Center
Orchestra. Mr. Marsalis¹s brother, the saxophonist Branford Marsalis, is to
lead a band for two nights of Mr. Evans¹s small-group jazz in the Allen
Room. 

As part of the ³Gospel Jazz Festival² in April 2008, Wynton Marsalis will
write a work commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center for the 200th
anniversary of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, based on the church¹s
Mass; it will involve the church¹s full choir, as well as the Jazz at
Lincoln Center Orchestra, and will be performed at Rose Theater and at the
church. During the same weekend, the pianist Eric Reed will collaborate with
the gospel singer Edwin Hawkins in the Allen Room.

Also in April, Wynton Marsalis and the Spanish pianist Chano Dominguez will
reprise ³De Cadiz a New Orleans,² a jazz-flamenco work written by Mr.
Dominguez and presented in 2003. Mr. Marsalis said that it deserved a better
performance and a better hearing, as well as a live recording.

The hall¹s Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame, Mr. Marsalis said, would become
a greater part of the concert scheduling. This year¹s inductees ‹ Clifford
Brown, Benny Carter, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt ‹ will be the
subject of concerts next season. The concerts will go beyond standard
repertory programs, he suggested, with actors playing the musicians through
various stages of their careers.

There will be continued Latin jazz, but after the current season, the
Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra ‹ the in-house Latin jazz orchestra led by Arturo
O¹Farrill since 2002 ‹ will end its affiliation with Jazz at Lincoln Center
to tour on its own, said a representative for Jazz at Lincoln Center.

New schedules for the organization¹s 22 educational programs, as well as
nightly bookings at its jazz club, Dizzy¹s Club Coca-Cola, will be released
in the spring. Tickets for all the concerts presented at Rose Theater and
the Allen Room go on sale today, at www.jalc.org.