Wynton Marsalis

Wednesday

Graeme Thomson

A joyous opening to Edinburgh

From our UK edition

The title of the opening concert of the Edinburgh International Festival is also the thesis statement for this year’s entire EIF programme. All Rise is intended to be a celebration of integration, pluralism and collective acceptance, ‘togetherness and ascendance’, at a time when such notions could hardly be less in vogue. It takes a big work to live up to the billing. Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis’s 12-part symphony, which premièred in New York in 1999, certainly doesn’t lack scale or ambition. For this mammoth hybrid composition for jazz ensemble, symphony orchestra and choir, Marsalis and his Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra were joined at the Usher Hall by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers.

Friday

The Spectator

The Spectator’s Music of the Year 2023

Teresa Mull, assistant editor A Cat in the Rain by the Turnpike Troubadours The Turnpike Troubadours are back with a new album that sounds a lot like their old ones, which is why I like it so much. A Cat in the Rain has been heralded as “a triumphant comeback,” and indeed, as a fan who’s followed (or tried to, anyway) the Red Dirt band’s ongoing drama, I was surprised and delighted to welcome the return of Evan Felker’s rustic voice singing some fresh, but still familiar-feeling, songs. The lyrics have a gentler, humbler feel to them — overcoming alcoholism by laboring on a cattle ranch and rekindling with the wife you divorced to produce two kids will do that to a man, apparently.

turnpike troubadours music

Thursday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Messenger service

When Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers visited Japan for a two-week tour in 1961, they were among the first Western groups to tour the country. It didn’t take much for the locals to get the message. The legendary drummer’s band contained what might be his strongest lineup ever — Lee Morgan on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Bobby Timmons on piano and Jymie Merritt on bass — and they were greeted by elated fans upon landing at Haneda Airport on New Year’s Day. “It was like a florist’s shop,” Blakey recalled. “They wanted me to make a speech but I couldn’t. I just cried.” For the band members, this maiden voyage was a deeply moving experience. Back home, they had been relegated to playing, more often than not, in smoky jazz clubs.

messengers

Monday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Wynton’s works

Jazz has periodically seen the rise of so-called “young lions.” The phrase was first used in 1961 as the title of a Lee Morgan LP put out by Vee-Jay Records, a black-owned company, with cover art that sports a photo of four lions lounging on a stone ledge. Then, in 1983, Elektra Records released an LP that was also titled The Young Lions, featuring Wynton Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin and a number of other young musicians who were focused on reclaiming the bebop tradition. Now, in late November, as Marsalis celebrated his sixtieth birthday with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the Rose Theater, his baritone saxophone player Paul Nedzela (as the New York Times reported) called out during a rehearsal, “It’s the Young Lions!

Marsalis