21-09-2011, 02:04 PM
Ed Jewett Wrote:I have a quote tucked away somewhere from Marsalis on excellence, Juilliard and the Yankees from a PBS show on Juilliard: http://www.thirteen.org/pressroom/release.php?get=188
Wynton Marsalis Live at the Royal Albert Hall 2002
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqOOO74MHAM
This is the song that slowly made me wake up and realize the greatness in Mark Knopfler:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64vvX6-d_...grec_index
Maralis playing "Cherokee" at the RAH tells us all we need to know about his limitations and intentions. His double-time runs are absent all internal logic and musicality, and his physical posturing, including facial contortions, are evidence of the intent to deceive.
And he has the balls to call Miles Davis a poseur!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ren8bO5EKs
Listen to Clifford Brown's "Cherokee" ... hear the balanced "stanzas" and ever-lengthening lines ... the mini-melodies used as motifs to build upon ... dig the lovely melodic bit used at the beginning of the bridge during the trading of fours with Max Roach ... BEAUTIFUL!
Listen and compare the Marsalis and Brown readings often enough, and you'll appreciate the differences. And think about this: Eventually you'll find that you can hum many of Brown's lines. Marsalis's lines are just notes.
It's the difference between writing and typing.
Then go to the ultimate: Charlie Parker playing "Koko," his take on "Cherokee" changes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_ZajJd-1kY
In the '70s a five-saxophone group calling itself "Super Sax" recorded harmonized arrangements of Parker solos, including "Koko." They were able to do so because Bird's improvisations were supremely logical in their development, overall structure, and sheer melodicism even at the most hellish of tempos.
Compare these to Marsalis's ersatz concoction.
Underlying all of my thoughts about art is my conviction that it can be evaluated via the application of objective, universal standards. I appreciate the fact that Marsalis agrees with me. He is a fairly gifted if infrequently eloquent teacher.
One more point: The great alto saxophonist Phil Woods has referred to Ken Burns's "Jazz" documentary as a "travesty." I wholeheartedly agree. The series is at best the equivalent of a razor-thin Wikipedia entry designed to raid the discretionary incomes of the congregants of the Avatar of the Armanis.
One case in point: To "explain" Charlie Parker and Bebop, Burns trots out Marsalis. Now bear in mind that the powerfully articulate Woods and his contemporary and Parker protege Jackie McLean were available to offer their extraordinary first-hand insights into Bird's music and the social context from which it emerged. McLean, the distinguished educator who founded the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the University of Hartford's Hartt School of Music, does appear for a total of two minutes or so. Woods, another world-class educator as well as epochal altoist, is among the missing.
But Burns does give us Marsalis, who shamefully reduces as important and towering a period of musical evolution as any you can name from any genre to a series of "boop-be-da-doo-beeeee" nonsense syllables delivered in a faux drawl.
"Jazz" is to jazz what "Ultimate Sacrifice" is to JFK assassination truth and justice.
And Wynton Marsalis is its ideal Facilitator.