Lincoln Center Jazz

Saw the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the Barbican last night, musical director Wynton Marsalis, playing the music of Art Blakey and Wynton Marsalis. Good, but I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I had hoped. I’m no great expert, but I’m not sure whether the sound was quite right for the large size of the hall. It seemed that the microphones weren’t picking up everything consistently, making the complicated passages confusing. This was also reflected in the fact that I didn’t hear the name of a single musician, despite soloists being name–checked by Marsalis after every tune.

On the other hand, the hall was too big to quite carry off playing unamplified, as Marsalis was attempting on some occasions. Maybe as a result of this, there were times when things sounded over–complicated and lacking the feelgood, soulful swing that is one of the things I love about jazz as opposed to so many other art forms — the kind of virtuosity that takes you past all the artistic and intellectual pretension prevalent in so much art (I’m thinking classical music, contemporary dance, painting, to name a few examples) and shows you a good time and makes you want to stand up and shout “yeah!” rather than just stroking your beard and muttering “interesting” to a companion.

About half of the second set after the interval was taken up by a new “jazz ballet” by Jazz Exchange, music provided by some of the Lincoln Center orchestra. This wasn’t entirely convincing either — the choreography seemed fairly uninteresting “jazz” dance and I soon found my attention wandering. I don’t think that the choreographer would have filled the Barbican Hall other than on the coattails of Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz orchestra — finding a parity of talent always a problem in collaborations.

Having said all that, there’s no doubt that these are damn good musicians. Over the course of the evening there were great passages coming from many directions, sounding best when it was pared down to a straight solo allowed to ring out over backing from bass, drums and piano (all three of whom were excellent — really enjoyed these guys). I thought one of the other trumpet players did some really good things too.

UPDATE 30/01/03: From seeing the LCJO again tonight, I can now identify this trumpet player as Ryan Kisor, who had another good performance doing the Benny Goodman set.