Some of Britain's most notorious cases have been tried at London's old bailey, including those attracting the death penalty until the punishment was abolished in the 1960s. But this week, capital crimes returned to the central criminal court of England and wales, with a unique musical protest.

U.S. Death Row Inmate Stages Jazz Protest

American Jazz legend and Grammy award winner Herbie Hancock performed at a special concert in New Delhi on Monday, January 15th. The concert was organised by the US embassy in India.

Jazz legends perform in New Delhi | US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti jazzes it up

A little known but century-old ban on jazz in schools in a US city has been reversed unanimously, an AP report said.&nbsp;

The move was taken by the school board of New Orleans. The city seems to have played a major role in developing jazz. It is still played at many venues nightly.&nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-marines-announce-uniform-changes-permit-longer-hair-different-socks-more-nail-colours-465652" hreflang="en">US Marines announce uniform changes, permit longer hair, different socks, more nail colours</a>

During the meeting on Thursday night, Orleans Parish School Board President Olin Parker told AP, “I’m very glad that we can rescind this policy. I want to acknowledge it. It was rooted in racism.” &nbsp;&nbsp;

“And I also want to acknowledge the tremendous contributions of our students and especially of our band directors, whose legacy continues from 1922 through present day,” added Parker. &nbsp;

Ken Ducote, executive director, Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools, had brought the policy to the board’s attention after reading about it in Al Kennedy’s book “Chord Changes on the Chalkboard: How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and the Music of New Orleans.” &nbsp;

Watch:&nbsp;US, allies discuss further oil release due to the rise in gas prices worldwide

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“We’re glad that the policy was ignored by our schools, because our schools played a major role in the development of jazz,” said member Katherine Baudouin.&nbsp;&nbsp;

On March 24, 1922, the earlier board's vote was passed without “prior policy development, analysis, or debate,” and the proposal had not been on the agenda, the current board noted. &nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

A little known but century-old ban on jazz in schools in a US city has been reversed unanimously, an AP report said. The move was taken by the school board of New Orleans.

A little known but century-old ban on jazz in schools in a US city has been reversed unanimously, an AP report said. The move was taken by the school board of New Orleans. The city seems to have played a major role in developing jazz. It is still played at many venues nightly. Also Read: US Marines announce uniform changes, permit longer hair, different socks, more nail colours During the meeting on Thursday night, Orleans Parish School Board President Olin Parker told AP, “I’m very glad that we can rescind this policy. I want to acknowledge it. It was rooted in racism.” “And I also want to acknowledge the tremendous contributions of our students and especially of our band directors, whose legacy continues from 1922 through present day,” added Parker. Ken Ducote, executive director, Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools, had brought the policy to the board’s attention after reading about it in Al Kennedy’s book “Chord Changes on the Chalkboard: How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and the Music of New Orleans.” Watch: US, allies discuss further oil release due to the rise in gas prices worldwide × “We’re glad that the policy was ignored by our schools, because our schools played a major role in the development of jazz,” said member Katherine Baudouin. On March 24, 1922, the earlier board's vote was passed without “prior policy development, analysis, or debate,” and the proposal had not been on the agenda, the current board noted. (With inputs from agencies)

US city reverses century-old ban on jazz in schools unanimously  

Violinist and multimedia artist Laura Ortman stood onstage at the Stone, a performance space in New York City, earlier this month clad in a bejeweled paisley jacket with a bow under her arm. She welcomed the crowd with an interested smile and explained that the music that evening would be “dedicated to distance.” After the set she spoke again, saying that throughout it she had been meditating on the feeling of “never being close enough.”

The first 20 minutes were played only in duet with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, and they were probably the most affecting part. The musicians weren’t heavy-handed about the set’s theme, but about 15 minutes in, after a hefty silence, Ortman played a few sharp, playful curlicues on the violin and Alcorn responded with a restive note held in the lower register. They carried on like this for about a minute, and the tension was noticeable from below: two communicators, stuck at opposite ends of multiple spectra at once — melody/drone, high/low, rhythmic/unfixed — finding a way to direct and follow at the same time.

Throughout 2021, I often got the most out of records made by duos, which allowed me to hear musicians not just collaborating but conversing directly. It likely wasn’t just the pandemic that brought me there, or that led to so many great duet recordings this year: We’ve been tunneling toward mutually assured isolation for a long time, embracing a digital existence that has reorganized, among other things, how we talk to each other and how we make music.

The pair of electromagnetic, almost sensual albums released by saxophonist Sam Gendel and bassist Sam Wilkes seem to be having an intimate conversation with this moment. They recorded “Music for Saxofone &amp;&nbsp;Bass Guitar,” released in 2018, and its follow-up, “Music for Saxofone &amp;&nbsp;Bass Guitar More Songs,” out this year, live to tape during a series of casual performances outside restaurants in Los Angeles, with each musician manning a setup of loops, effects and other manipulators. They hardly sound like live albums, but they’re not studio recordings either.

“Honestly, it’s an extension of hanging out and connecting on some stuff and then saying, ‘Oh, let’s jam,’” Gendel said in a video interview with Wilkes last week. “Then after we jammed, it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s move the jam down the street and play in front of some people, low-key, just unannounced.’” Some members of their impromptu audience were transfixed; others, they said, carried on eating and chatting.

It works: Gendel and Wilkes seem so intently focused on each other, they might not need an audience. But there’s plenty of room for your ears, if you tap into the space they’ve created.

Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, a pair of hip-hop producers with Hall of Fame resumes, teamed up a few years ago with a shared goal: to challenge themselves to take their chops up a notch, not just as producers but as instrumentalists.

“That became the aspiration — to go beyond just sampling, to really understand, like, Man, what were they thinking about when they played this?” Muhammad said in a video interview, referring to the jazz musicians whose recordings he has sampled so heavily from, as a member of A Tribe Called Quest and after.

Younge and Muhammad invited some of their ’70s jazz heroes — Roy Ayers, Brian Jackson, Gary Bartz — into the studio, and recorded a series of short albums through a process that was heavily improvised. They’ve been releasing those records throughout the pandemic on their own label, Jazz Is Dead. Loose and vernacular and charged with reverence, these LPs have the ambient feeling of a studio outtake from a recording session that never happened, caught somewhere in the airspace between 50 years ago and today.

Unlikely cross-generational collaborations bore rich fruit in other realms of the jazz world this year, too. In the spring, pianist Jason Moran self-released an arresting duet performance he’d given at the Big Ears Festival in 2019, alongside drummer and polymath Milford Graves. Young vocalist Nick Hakim and elder saxophonist Roy Nathanson created a tender and playful album, “Small Things,” in Nathanson’s basement in early 2020. Eminent jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders teamed up with electronic musician and composer Floating Points, né Sam Shepherd, to record “Promises,” which both expanded and cooled down each musician’s natural aesthetics. It landed at the top of many critics’ best-of-2021 lists, including mine.

The duet has a long and fertile history in jazz, although in the course of an artist’s career it’s usually seen as a detour, not a main road. Even Louis Armstrong, jazz’s first great soloist, made some of his finest early recordings in duet with pianist Earl Hines; ever since, the format has offered listeners a close perspective into both the playing and the listening of jazz’s great improvisers. And from the 1960s it has been a preferred format on the avant-garde, where free-form improvising can really reward a smaller format. When Graves, who died this year, was in his 20s and already well into a Promethean career, his duet with piano titan Don Pullen became a vehicle for artistic innovation, economic self-determination (through their collaborative label) and political visioning.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/hollywood/news-%E2%80%98zorro%E2%80%99-series-starring-wilmer-valderrama-in-works-437035" hreflang="en">‘Zorro’ series starring Wilmer Valderrama in works</a>

Sara Schoenbeck is one of the few improvising bassoonists of her pedigree, but she rarely makes music as a leader. When she decided a few years ago to make an album under her name, a duet format made sense: Hers is a quiet, unwieldy instrument; playing in duos allows her “not to have to stress about using amplification, or not have to change the way that I would naturally want to play,” she said.

The self-titled album that she released last month consists of nine duets, each with a different musical partner; including original compositions, open-ended improvisations and one cover of a tune by slowcore band Low, each track is arresting in a different way. One of the quietest — and the one that most rewards careful listening — features saxophonist and avant-garde eminence Roscoe Mitchell. Playing with him, Schoenbeck said, made her think about patience. It was a reminder that the way to show someone you’ve heard them isn’t always to respond.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/hollywood/news-ben-affleck-got-alcohol-addiction-as-he-felt-trapped-in-marriage-to-jennifer-garner-437006" hreflang="en">Shocking! Ben Affleck felt 'trapped' in marriage to Jennifer Garner</a>

She said she’d challenged herself with this question: “How much can you start from a small idea and not move too quickly?” And Mitchell, she said, is “kind of a master at that.”

“When you’re performing, your endorphins change; your idea of time and space changes, and it’s really easy to move too quickly,” Schoenbeck added. “So that’s something I’ve come back to: How do you not move too quickly, how do you stay in a space, how do you gradually&nbsp;change the language that’s happening? It’s hard.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Violinist and multimedia artist Laura Ortman stood onstage at the Stone, a performance space in New York City, earlier this month clad in a bejeweled paisley jacket with a bow under her arm.

Violinist and multimedia artist Laura Ortman stood onstage at the Stone, a performance space in New York City, earlier this month clad in a bejeweled paisley jacket with a bow under her arm. She welcomed the crowd with an interested smile and explained that the music that evening would be “dedicated to distance.” After the set she spoke again, saying that throughout it she had been meditating on the feeling of “never being close enough.” The first 20 minutes were played only in duet with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, and they were probably the most affecting part. The musicians weren’t heavy-handed about the set’s theme, but about 15 minutes in, after a hefty silence, Ortman played a few sharp, playful curlicues on the violin and Alcorn responded with a restive note held in the lower register. They carried on like this for about a minute, and the tension was noticeable from below: two communicators, stuck at opposite ends of multiple spectra at once — melody/drone, high/low, rhythmic/unfixed — finding a way to direct and follow at the same time. Throughout 2021, I often got the most out of records made by duos, which allowed me to hear musicians not just collaborating but conversing directly. It likely wasn’t just the pandemic that brought me there, or that led to so many great duet recordings this year: We’ve been tunneling toward mutually assured isolation for a long time, embracing a digital existence that has reorganized, among other things, how we talk to each other and how we make music. The pair of electromagnetic, almost sensual albums released by saxophonist Sam Gendel and bassist Sam Wilkes seem to be having an intimate conversation with this moment. They recorded “Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar,” released in 2018, and its follow-up, “Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar More Songs,” out this year, live to tape during a series of casual performances outside restaurants in Los Angeles, with each musician manning a setup of loops, effects and other manipulators. They hardly sound like live albums, but they’re not studio recordings either. “Honestly, it’s an extension of hanging out and connecting on some stuff and then saying, ‘Oh, let’s jam,’” Gendel said in a video interview with Wilkes last week. “Then after we jammed, it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s move the jam down the street and play in front of some people, low-key, just unannounced.’” Some members of their impromptu audience were transfixed; others, they said, carried on eating and chatting. It works: Gendel and Wilkes seem so intently focused on each other, they might not need an audience. But there’s plenty of room for your ears, if you tap into the space they’ve created. Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, a pair of hip-hop producers with Hall of Fame resumes, teamed up a few years ago with a shared goal: to challenge themselves to take their chops up a notch, not just as producers but as instrumentalists. “That became the aspiration — to go beyond just sampling, to really understand, like, Man, what were they thinking about when they played this?” Muhammad said in a video interview, referring to the jazz musicians whose recordings he has sampled so heavily from, as a member of A Tribe Called Quest and after. Younge and Muhammad invited some of their ’70s jazz heroes — Roy Ayers, Brian Jackson, Gary Bartz — into the studio, and recorded a series of short albums through a process that was heavily improvised. They’ve been releasing those records throughout the pandemic on their own label, Jazz Is Dead. Loose and vernacular and charged with reverence, these LPs have the ambient feeling of a studio outtake from a recording session that never happened, caught somewhere in the airspace between 50 years ago and today. Unlikely cross-generational collaborations bore rich fruit in other realms of the jazz world this year, too. In the spring, pianist Jason Moran self-released an arresting duet performance he’d given at the Big Ears Festival in 2019, alongside drummer and polymath Milford Graves. Young vocalist Nick Hakim and elder saxophonist Roy Nathanson created a tender and playful album, “Small Things,” in Nathanson’s basement in early 2020. Eminent jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders teamed up with electronic musician and composer Floating Points, né Sam Shepherd, to record “Promises,” which both expanded and cooled down each musician’s natural aesthetics. It landed at the top of many critics’ best-of-2021 lists, including mine. The duet has a long and fertile history in jazz, although in the course of an artist’s career it’s usually seen as a detour, not a main road. Even Louis Armstrong, jazz’s first great soloist, made some of his finest early recordings in duet with pianist Earl Hines; ever since, the format has offered listeners a close perspective into both the playing and the listening of jazz’s great improvisers. And from the 1960s it has been a preferred format on the avant-garde, where free-form improvising can really reward a smaller format. When Graves, who died this year, was in his 20s and already well into a Promethean career, his duet with piano titan Don Pullen became a vehicle for artistic innovation, economic self-determination (through their collaborative label) and political visioning. ‘Zorro’ series starring Wilmer Valderrama in works Sara Schoenbeck is one of the few improvising bassoonists of her pedigree, but she rarely makes music as a leader. When she decided a few years ago to make an album under her name, a duet format made sense: Hers is a quiet, unwieldy instrument; playing in duos allows her “not to have to stress about using amplification, or not have to change the way that I would naturally want to play,” she said. The self-titled album that she released last month consists of nine duets, each with a different musical partner; including original compositions, open-ended improvisations and one cover of a tune by slowcore band Low, each track is arresting in a different way. One of the quietest — and the one that most rewards careful listening — features saxophonist and avant-garde eminence Roscoe Mitchell. Playing with him, Schoenbeck said, made her think about patience. It was a reminder that the way to show someone you’ve heard them isn’t always to respond. Shocking! Ben Affleck felt 'trapped' in marriage to Jennifer Garner She said she’d challenged herself with this question: “How much can you start from a small idea and not move too quickly?” And Mitchell, she said, is “kind of a master at that.” “When you’re performing, your endorphins change; your idea of time and space changes, and it’s really easy to move too quickly,” Schoenbeck added. “So that’s something I’ve come back to: How do you not move too quickly, how do you stay in a space, how do you gradually change the language that’s happening? It’s hard.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

For Jazz musicians in 2021, two was the magic number

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was amused as four trumpet players, all but one under the age of 30, took their position in the rehearsal room late Tuesday morning.

 
“It’s the Young Lions!” called out baritone saxophone player Paul Nedzela, referring to the coterie of sharp-dressed, tradition-minded bop up-and-comers who rose during the Reagan and Clinton administrations while edging jazz toward a concert art with a classical music-style repertoire. 
That got a laugh.

 
“We tried that in the ’90s,” said bassist Carlos Henriquez.

 
Another laugh.

 
Soon, Wynton Marsalis, once the pride of those young lions, called the band to order from his perch in the trumpet section and the orchestra lit into “Windjammers,” a Marsalis cooker arranged to showcase the quartet of guest trumpeters, some of them students. The four swapped bars, breaks and occasionally expressions of wonderment, as if they couldn’t believe they were — to borrow a title from Marsalis’ own repertoire — in this house, on this morning.

 
The occasion: the kickoff to Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 34th concert season — and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s first indoor New York City performance since the COVID-19 shutdowns. The season will include a tribute to Chick Corea, who died in February; a celebration of the centennial of Charles Mingus; and three concerts showcasing extraordinary female singers Dianne Reeves, Catherine Russell and Cécile McLorin Salvant.

 
Excitement about the reopening pulsed through the band.

 
“To look at and see our audience, and to feel that energy, I’m going to be overwhelmed,” said Ted Nash, a saxophonist and composer. “We’ve been doing all this virtual stuff, but to create together a sound field and an energy field in person, where all the sounds meld together, this is why I do this.” 
Marsalis was quick to say he didn’t name this weekend’s concerts — “Wynton at 60” — which celebrate his new status as a sexagenarian with a program of his originals from four decades.

 
Still, despite a warm, even gentle demeanor, there was no doubt he was in charge, announcing the order of soloists at rehearsal or tweaks to the charts. But when a soloist occasionally asked how to approach a section, he replied, “Just do what you all want.” Or, “It’s you playing it.”

 
Freedom within a structure, of course, separates Jazz at Lincoln Center from other major performing arts institutions with a repertoire. So does Marsalis’ tradition of inviting young musicians to play on its biggest stage, the Rose Theater in the Columbus Circle complex.

 
“It shows the generations working together,” he said. “When we started the orchestra, surviving members of Duke Ellington’s orchestra played. Marcus Belgrave played with Ray Charles. Sir Roland Hanna played with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. Jerry Dodgion and Frank Wess played with Basie. They passed on a lot of the feeling of the music and its identity and meaning to us. So, this is a continuation.”

 
Chris Crenshaw, a trombonist, composer and arranger who has been in the orchestra since 2006, said, “We have a charge to keep. We have a responsibility. There’s so many things in all traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation orally or with music.”

 
The responsibilities that come with serving as the artistic director and public face of a major arts organization has meant that, for Marsalis, the shutdown was never truly a shutdown. He pulled out his phone and thumbed through dozens of photos of score pages for upcoming projects (a tuba concerto, a bassoon piece).

 
Versions of the band have toured the United States and the world, taking endless COVID-19 tests and often playing music from his politically engaged “The Democracy! Suite,” which boasts song titles like “Sloganize, Patronize, Realize, Revolutionize (Black Lives Matters).” Streaming concerts, from the vault and some fresh, have abounded and will continue. This season, any concert can be streamed for a donation of $10.

 
The work helps distract from the losses that have mounted since March 2020, including Marsalis’ musician father, Ellis, and his friend and mentor, critic Stanley Crouch, in addition to more musicians than any institution could fully memorialize.

 
“I tend not to dwell,” he said. “My dad, he said, ‘Everybody’s losing people. And when you focus too much on yours ...’” He let that thought drift away and then recalled something pianist John Lewis once said to him. “‘To focus too much on even something negative is a form of deep ego.’ 
“You got to keep moving forward, keep being productive and trying to create the world you envision,” Marsalis added.

 
At 60, Marsalis, who won a Pulitzer in 1997 for “Blood on the Fields,” his oratorio about slavery, sees a world in which democracy itself is imperiled, and “the intellectual class still always wants the Black man to be a fool on all levels.” His humanism, though, buoys him.

 
“You can subvert the Constitution and make it harder for people to vote, make it more difficult for government to work,” he said. “But there’s always voices that defend the integrity of the document, which is changeable — it’s not set in stone.”

 
He shifted quickly back to the subject upon which he has most often stirred controversy.

 
“Music is the same. You can be glib enough to undermine the integrity of it and be successful. But there’s always just enough voices who believe in the integrity of it.”

 
Those young trumpeters, in his estimation, count among those voices. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission has always focused on jazz education and advocacy, and the guest artists at “Wynton at 60” — Summer Camargo, Giveton Gelin, Tatum Greenblatt and Anthony Hervey — demonstrate the power of that outreach.

 
Camargo caught Marsalis’ attention when her South Florida high school placed in the institution’s annual “Essentially Ellington” contest, which invites school bands to record themselves playing free Duke Ellington charts and then brings the finalists to New York City to perform. Now a Juilliard student, Camargo said she never would have attempted composition without the impetus of the contest, where, in 2018, she won awards for composing as well as for soloing.

 
“When people ask me what was one of the best days of your life, I always go back to that moment,” she said. “Wynton took me backstage and gave me compliments and advice. He doesn’t sugarcoat it; he tells you what you need to do to get better.”

 
Gelin, a recent Juilliard graduate who self-released his debut album, also praised Marsalis’ generosity as a mentor — and his practical advice. Visiting New York from the Bahamas during his high school years, Gelin attended a free Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra concert in Queens and afterward worked his way through the line to meet Marsalis. The next day, Gelin played for him at his home and was surprised that so famous a figure invested such energy in urging a kid to dig deeper into developing his own voice.

 
“I spent a lot of time in the Haitian church,” Gelin said. “One of the first things Wynton said to me was to listen closely to the singers there and how their vocal qualities reflect where they’re from.” 
Marsalis nodded when reminded of this encounter.

 
“Your sound will be organic when who you are doesn’t fight with who you want to be,” he said. 
On opening night Thursday, the four up-and-comers got their shot onstage. The orchestra’s 90-minute set surveyed some of Marsalis’ most crowd-pleasing compositions, including big-band stompers, ballads and percolating curios marked by his fondness for musical onomatopoeia, with muted horns aping the buzz of bees and the keening of train whistles.

 
The 15-member ensemble tackled “The Holy Ghost,” from Marsalis’ “Abyssinian Mass,” and he delivered a bracing, unamplified solo on a quartet treatment of Gordon Jenkins’ “Goodbye” that he dedicated “to all the people who have lost someone and didn’t get to tell them goodbye.”

 
But the most boisterous crowd response came soon after those young trumpeters took the stage. Camargo’s gutsy opening solo brought patrons to their feet and inspired Marsalis — her hero — to muse afterward, “She ain’t playing around at all.”

 
The four ringers’ joyous clamor brought the house down. Marsalis called their presence “a birthday present to myself,” but their performances suggested it’s not just a gift for him.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was amused as four trumpet players, all but one under the age of 30, took their position in the rehearsal room late Tuesday morning.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was amused as four trumpet players, all but one under the age of 30, took their position in the rehearsal room late Tuesday morning. “It’s the Young Lions!” called out baritone saxophone player Paul Nedzela, referring to the coterie of sharp-dressed, tradition-minded bop up-and-comers who rose during the Reagan and Clinton administrations while edging jazz toward a concert art with a classical music-style repertoire. That got a laugh. “We tried that in the ’90s,” said bassist Carlos Henriquez. Another laugh. Soon, Wynton Marsalis, once the pride of those young lions, called the band to order from his perch in the trumpet section and the orchestra lit into “Windjammers,” a Marsalis cooker arranged to showcase the quartet of guest trumpeters, some of them students. The four swapped bars, breaks and occasionally expressions of wonderment, as if they couldn’t believe they were — to borrow a title from Marsalis’ own repertoire — in this house, on this morning. The occasion: the kickoff to Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 34th concert season — and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s first indoor New York City performance since the COVID-19 shutdowns. The season will include a tribute to Chick Corea, who died in February; a celebration of the centennial of Charles Mingus; and three concerts showcasing extraordinary female singers Dianne Reeves, Catherine Russell and Cécile McLorin Salvant. Excitement about the reopening pulsed through the band. “To look at and see our audience, and to feel that energy, I’m going to be overwhelmed,” said Ted Nash, a saxophonist and composer. “We’ve been doing all this virtual stuff, but to create together a sound field and an energy field in person, where all the sounds meld together, this is why I do this.” Marsalis was quick to say he didn’t name this weekend’s concerts — “Wynton at 60” — which celebrate his new status as a sexagenarian with a program of his originals from four decades. Still, despite a warm, even gentle demeanor, there was no doubt he was in charge, announcing the order of soloists at rehearsal or tweaks to the charts. But when a soloist occasionally asked how to approach a section, he replied, “Just do what you all want.” Or, “It’s you playing it.” Freedom within a structure, of course, separates Jazz at Lincoln Center from other major performing arts institutions with a repertoire. So does Marsalis’ tradition of inviting young musicians to play on its biggest stage, the Rose Theater in the Columbus Circle complex. “It shows the generations working together,” he said. “When we started the orchestra, surviving members of Duke Ellington’s orchestra played. Marcus Belgrave played with Ray Charles. Sir Roland Hanna played with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. Jerry Dodgion and Frank Wess played with Basie. They passed on a lot of the feeling of the music and its identity and meaning to us. So, this is a continuation.” Chris Crenshaw, a trombonist, composer and arranger who has been in the orchestra since 2006, said, “We have a charge to keep. We have a responsibility. There’s so many things in all traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation orally or with music.” The responsibilities that come with serving as the artistic director and public face of a major arts organization has meant that, for Marsalis, the shutdown was never truly a shutdown. He pulled out his phone and thumbed through dozens of photos of score pages for upcoming projects (a tuba concerto, a bassoon piece). Versions of the band have toured the United States and the world, taking endless COVID-19 tests and often playing music from his politically engaged “The Democracy! Suite,” which boasts song titles like “Sloganize, Patronize, Realize, Revolutionize (Black Lives Matters).” Streaming concerts, from the vault and some fresh, have abounded and will continue. This season, any concert can be streamed for a donation of $10. The work helps distract from the losses that have mounted since March 2020, including Marsalis’ musician father, Ellis, and his friend and mentor, critic Stanley Crouch, in addition to more musicians than any institution could fully memorialize. “I tend not to dwell,” he said. “My dad, he said, ‘Everybody’s losing people. And when you focus too much on yours ...’” He let that thought drift away and then recalled something pianist John Lewis once said to him. “‘To focus too much on even something negative is a form of deep ego.’ “You got to keep moving forward, keep being productive and trying to create the world you envision,” Marsalis added. At 60, Marsalis, who won a Pulitzer in 1997 for “Blood on the Fields,” his oratorio about slavery, sees a world in which democracy itself is imperiled, and “the intellectual class still always wants the Black man to be a fool on all levels.” His humanism, though, buoys him. “You can subvert the Constitution and make it harder for people to vote, make it more difficult for government to work,” he said. “But there’s always voices that defend the integrity of the document, which is changeable — it’s not set in stone.” He shifted quickly back to the subject upon which he has most often stirred controversy. “Music is the same. You can be glib enough to undermine the integrity of it and be successful. But there’s always just enough voices who believe in the integrity of it.” Those young trumpeters, in his estimation, count among those voices. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission has always focused on jazz education and advocacy, and the guest artists at “Wynton at 60” — Summer Camargo, Giveton Gelin, Tatum Greenblatt and Anthony Hervey — demonstrate the power of that outreach. Camargo caught Marsalis’ attention when her South Florida high school placed in the institution’s annual “Essentially Ellington” contest, which invites school bands to record themselves playing free Duke Ellington charts and then brings the finalists to New York City to perform. Now a Juilliard student, Camargo said she never would have attempted composition without the impetus of the contest, where, in 2018, she won awards for composing as well as for soloing. “When people ask me what was one of the best days of your life, I always go back to that moment,” she said. “Wynton took me backstage and gave me compliments and advice. He doesn’t sugarcoat it; he tells you what you need to do to get better.” Gelin, a recent Juilliard graduate who self-released his debut album, also praised Marsalis’ generosity as a mentor — and his practical advice. Visiting New York from the Bahamas during his high school years, Gelin attended a free Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra concert in Queens and afterward worked his way through the line to meet Marsalis. The next day, Gelin played for him at his home and was surprised that so famous a figure invested such energy in urging a kid to dig deeper into developing his own voice. “I spent a lot of time in the Haitian church,” Gelin said. “One of the first things Wynton said to me was to listen closely to the singers there and how their vocal qualities reflect where they’re from.” Marsalis nodded when reminded of this encounter. “Your sound will be organic when who you are doesn’t fight with who you want to be,” he said. On opening night Thursday, the four up-and-comers got their shot onstage. The orchestra’s 90-minute set surveyed some of Marsalis’ most crowd-pleasing compositions, including big-band stompers, ballads and percolating curios marked by his fondness for musical onomatopoeia, with muted horns aping the buzz of bees and the keening of train whistles. The 15-member ensemble tackled “The Holy Ghost,” from Marsalis’ “Abyssinian Mass,” and he delivered a bracing, unamplified solo on a quartet treatment of Gordon Jenkins’ “Goodbye” that he dedicated “to all the people who have lost someone and didn’t get to tell them goodbye.” But the most boisterous crowd response came soon after those young trumpeters took the stage. Camargo’s gutsy opening solo brought patrons to their feet and inspired Marsalis — her hero — to muse afterward, “She ain’t playing around at all.” The four ringers’ joyous clamor brought the house down. Marsalis called their presence “a birthday present to myself,” but their performances suggested it’s not just a gift for him.

Jazz at Lincoln Center reopens, with four young players in the spotlight

Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts has died at the age of 80. Publicist Bernard Doherty said Tuesday (24 AUG. 2021) that Watts "passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family."

Drummer Charlie Watts, Rolling Stones backbone, dies at 80

Damien Chazelle&rsquo;s musical &quot;La La Land&quot;&nbsp;has swept the 2017 Golden Globes, a bellwether for the upcoming Academy Awards. It has also inspired quite a few arched eyebrows. After all, it is a &lsquo;film&rsquo; about two young &lsquo;white&rsquo; people trying&nbsp;to save a &lsquo;black&rsquo; cultural product, Jazz, and find meaning in the thespian world respectively.

The film&rsquo;s sweeping success is attributed to Hollywood&rsquo;s approval of a narcissism rooted in the idea of &lsquo;the white man&rsquo;s burden&rsquo; and self-referentialism.

Chazelle, 31, was once a struggling Jazz drummer at the Princeton High School and his own angst and anxieties about music have found expression earlier in the Academy winning &quot;Whiplash&quot;&nbsp;(2014). Built around the Charlie Parker myth, &quot;Whiplash&quot;&nbsp;shows how music survives reverberating through bloody fingers, abusive instructors, and emotionally wrecked genius. The success of these two films, amongst many others dealing with music, shows that people may or may not care for a particular genre of music but a cinematic narrative on it does pull at their heartstrings.

This brings us to ask a question: are cinema and TV, not the white men and women, the saviours that art and music forms need?&nbsp;

Raja Sen, film and music critic, shares that a film or TV series on a particular genre of music plays a crucial role. &ldquo;Very simply, they aim for a scope that is beyond the size of the genre itself. Popular film is incredibly inclusive and tries to speak to all, which is why a film about jazz can speak to more than just those who (already) love jazz.&rdquo;&nbsp;

His views are echoed by Krish Ashok, a Chennai-based musician and columnist, who says that films are essential for reviving and sustaining classical art forms, music being one of them. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s difficult to get people to listen to classical music bypassing the films. Their first exposure to it is through films and the eventual dream is to make music for films. Indian film music in the 1940s and till much after that was popular form of Indian classical music. Ilayaraja and A R Rahman have been bringing classical music to laymen through their film compositions&rdquo;

Most films, however, are accused of playing to the gallery and diluting the purity of the genre. Is the purist right in worrying about the sanctity of the form? Ashok states emphatically that popularisation should not be seen as a threat since Classical always stays. He brings in a caveat however. &ldquo;Questions regarding appropriation of cultural products while popularising them are valid to an extent. When the folk music born out of poverty and deprivation becomes club style, the contrast is stark.&rdquo; Talking of the music scene in the USA, Ashok adds, &ldquo;Every pop genre in the USA since the 1920s came from the blacks and yet it is the white artists who took the centre-stage. Elvis Presley became much bigger Rock n Roll icon than Chuck Berry; Eminem is bigger than his black counterparts in hip-hop and Rap.&rdquo;

A techie trained in Carnatic music, Ashok is gentle towards the purists&rsquo; urge to be protective towards their inherited form. However, he says that the purist wilfully ignores the impure genesis of his form while jealously guarding only the inherited finished product, &ldquo;the latest update,&rdquo; against corrupting influences. &ldquo;In India, Carnatic and Hindustani traditions owe a lot to Western and Persian influences. Music flourishes through improvisations.&rdquo;

Sunanda Rao Erdem, one of the handful degree holders in Opera singing in India, is in slight disagreement here.

&ldquo;Improvisation cannot be a blanket saviour for all music. For example, the Western classical music has been written down by composers already. It is bound to sound the same. Nuances are dependent only on the conductors and performers who bring their personalities into the interpretation of the sheets.&rdquo; She adds, &ldquo;Jazz is not written down, it is passed down ear to ear. There is more scope for improvisation there. Likewise, Indian classical music is more adaptable since it allows for greater degree of experimentation while retaining its formal structure. This may be one of the reasons why Western classical music has not been able to penetrate the Indian audience.&rdquo;

Certainly, musicians and conductors have been personalising classical music despite the mandated strict adherence to form. Gustavo Dudamel, who conducted the iconic Vienne Philharmonic Orchestra&rsquo;s New Year Concert on January 1, the youngest conductor to do so, has been reading the note-sheets through his eccentricity tinted glasses. Not yet 36, this South American conductor has managed to create ripples in the oft-perceived placid world of western classical music. By choosing Dudamel to conduct the concert this year, which happens to be a landmark one due to the 175th anniversary of the Vienna Philharmonic, the 150th birth anniversary of Empress Maria Theresa, and the 150th anniversary of the first performance of Strauss&rsquo;s &lsquo;Blue Danube,&rsquo; the western classical music establishment may have given out a strong signal.

Dudamel, who has inspired &quot;Mozart in the Jungle,&quot;&nbsp;an immensely popular TV series, is known for his effervescence, the kind that makes the audience at the famed Golden Hall at the Musikverein in Vienna tap its feet. The purists may have written Dudamel off for being compulsively gimmicky, his ebullient personality is a big pull for the newly interested in western classical music. His innovative ways to broaden the audience base range from collaboration with LENA (Leading European Newspapers Alliance), conducting the soundtrack for Star Wars to his commitment to community and music education. Through Youth Orchestra LA (YOLA) programme, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and its community partners have been providing free of cost training, instruments and mentorship to students from under-privileged backgrounds.

Ashok locates Dudamel&rsquo;s rise in the cyclical nature of the history of music. &ldquo;If we study the history of Western Classical music over the past 100 years, we shall see that every 10-20 years one maverick comes whose genius forces people to take note of that particular genre of music.&rdquo;

This decade belongs to Dudamel and his innovative ways.

The idea of &ldquo;popification&rdquo; of classical music in films also needs to be examined critically. Coming on the heels of the Baroque style, Bach and Mozart secularised music like never before. &ldquo;To their contemporaries, they too were pop stars. Same with Tchaikovsky. What was once pop has now become classical. Classical music as a genre is not static; the definitions are constantly changing. Jazz was borne out of experimentation and yet seen as a serious, almost classical form,&rdquo; says Ashok.

This perchance explains the sentiment of protectiveness about Jazz when a film like &quot;La La Land&quot;&nbsp;seeks to capitalise on it. Rao-Erdem, a self-proclaimed purist, understands well that this overprotective attitude may not serve the cause of classical music. &ldquo;Chinese opera music is a dying form. The Chinese are extremely purist in their treatment of arts. The government is trying hard to resurrect the opera tradition but lack of innovation is their biggest enemy.&rdquo; She adds, &ldquo;Many small orchestras in Europe&nbsp;have run out of business due to their inability to keep pace with the changing world around them. Maybe they needed something like Pavarotti and Friends.&rdquo;&nbsp;New tricks are needed for a brave new world.

Before the 20th century &ldquo;rules of concert etiquette&rdquo; made the concerts stifling and somewhat painful, listening to classical music was a full-bodied social experience. As a backlash to the mechanical production of music, live concerts attempted to retain their charm and aura by putting in place certain rules of engagement for the audience. Today, a minuscule fraction of the world population goes to classical concerts. As per a 2012 study by the National Endowment for Arts, 8.8% of Americans had attended a classical concert in the last 12 months. No wonder then that the major symphonic orchestras in the USA are facing the music. While the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York City Opera filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and 2013 respectively, other major outfits have seen strikes in the last five years.

Is the purist, then, not the biggest enemy of the art it most zealously aims to protect? Ashok gives an interesting response to this. &ldquo;Purists are important for the growth of music. Great art always emerges out of purism. Constraints and not absolute freedom creates it. John Cage&rsquo;s 4&rsquo;33&rdquo; is an example of compulsive experimentation. But will it, should it, be considered a classic? It is only when there is a keenly felt need to break away that music flourishes. That need is a gift of the purist to the experimentalist.&rdquo;

Sen&rsquo;s view of the purist is a little less charitable. &ldquo;I think the purist still has the form at its purest. I see no bother in an unschooled listener getting exposed to the music through some over-accessible form of it. It can often be a gateway.&rdquo; Rao-Erdem, on the other hand, stands her ground by asserting that only the presentation and not the music per se should be open to improvisation.

Individual and society; tradition and individual talent et al are bound to be locked in an unrelenting scrimmage. What may benefit the purist and the experimentalist is broadening the base of the audience, aided by innovative ways of engagement. If a &quot;La La Land&quot;&nbsp;inspires some YouTube searches for &ldquo;Jazz,&rdquo; so be it!

(WION)

Movies for example popularise the genre but they are also accused of 'diluting' its purity

Damien Chazelle’s musical "La La Land" has swept the 2017 Golden Globes, a bellwether for the upcoming Academy Awards. It has also inspired quite a few arched eyebrows. After all, it is a ‘film’ about two young ‘white’ people trying to save a ‘black’ cultural product, Jazz, and find meaning in the thespian world respectively. The film’s sweeping success is attributed to Hollywood’s approval of a narcissism rooted in the idea of ‘the white man’s burden’ and self-referentialism. Chazelle, 31, was once a struggling Jazz drummer at the Princeton High School and his own angst and anxieties about music have found expression earlier in the Academy winning "Whiplash" (2014). Built around the Charlie Parker myth, "Whiplash" shows how music survives reverberating through bloody fingers, abusive instructors, and emotionally wrecked genius. The success of these two films, amongst many others dealing with music, shows that people may or may not care for a particular genre of music but a cinematic narrative on it does pull at their heartstrings. This brings us to ask a question: are cinema and TV, not the white men and women, the saviours that art and music forms need? Raja Sen, film and music critic, shares that a film or TV series on a particular genre of music plays a crucial role. “Very simply, they aim for a scope that is beyond the size of the genre itself. Popular film is incredibly inclusive and tries to speak to all, which is why a film about jazz can speak to more than just those who (already) love jazz.” His views are echoed by Krish Ashok, a Chennai-based musician and columnist, who says that films are essential for reviving and sustaining classical art forms, music being one of them. “It’s difficult to get people to listen to classical music bypassing the films. Their first exposure to it is through films and the eventual dream is to make music for films. Indian film music in the 1940s and till much after that was popular form of Indian classical music. Ilayaraja and A R Rahman have been bringing classical music to laymen through their film compositions” Most films, however, are accused of playing to the gallery and diluting the purity of the genre. Is the purist right in worrying about the sanctity of the form? Ashok states emphatically that popularisation should not be seen as a threat since Classical always stays. He brings in a caveat however. “Questions regarding appropriation of cultural products while popularising them are valid to an extent. When the folk music born out of poverty and deprivation becomes club style, the contrast is stark.” Talking of the music scene in the USA, Ashok adds, “Every pop genre in the USA since the 1920s came from the blacks and yet it is the white artists who took the centre-stage. Elvis Presley became much bigger Rock n Roll icon than Chuck Berry; Eminem is bigger than his black counterparts in hip-hop and Rap.” A techie trained in Carnatic music, Ashok is gentle towards the purists’ urge to be protective towards their inherited form. However, he says that the purist wilfully ignores the impure genesis of his form while jealously guarding only the inherited finished product, “the latest update,” against corrupting influences. “In India, Carnatic and Hindustani traditions owe a lot to Western and Persian influences. Music flourishes through improvisations.” Sunanda Rao Erdem, one of the handful degree holders in Opera singing in India, is in slight disagreement here. “Improvisation cannot be a blanket saviour for all music. For example, the Western classical music has been written down by composers already. It is bound to sound the same. Nuances are dependent only on the conductors and performers who bring their personalities into the interpretation of the sheets.” She adds, “Jazz is not written down, it is passed down ear to ear. There is more scope for improvisation there. Likewise, Indian classical music is more adaptable since it allows for greater degree of experimentation while retaining its formal structure. This may be one of the reasons why Western classical music has not been able to penetrate the Indian audience.” Certainly, musicians and conductors have been personalising classical music despite the mandated strict adherence to form. Gustavo Dudamel, who conducted the iconic Vienne Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Year Concert on January 1, the youngest conductor to do so, has been reading the note-sheets through his eccentricity tinted glasses. Not yet 36, this South American conductor has managed to create ripples in the oft-perceived placid world of western classical music. By choosing Dudamel to conduct the concert this year, which happens to be a landmark one due to the 175th anniversary of the Vienna Philharmonic, the 150th birth anniversary of Empress Maria Theresa, and the 150th anniversary of the first performance of Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube,’ the western classical music establishment may have given out a strong signal. Dudamel, who has inspired "Mozart in the Jungle," an immensely popular TV series, is known for his effervescence, the kind that makes the audience at the famed Golden Hall at the Musikverein in Vienna tap its feet. The purists may have written Dudamel off for being compulsively gimmicky, his ebullient personality is a big pull for the newly interested in western classical music. His innovative ways to broaden the audience base range from collaboration with LENA (Leading European Newspapers Alliance), conducting the soundtrack for Star Wars to his commitment to community and music education. Through Youth Orchestra LA (YOLA) programme, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and its community partners have been providing free of cost training, instruments and mentorship to students from under-privileged backgrounds. Ashok locates Dudamel’s rise in the cyclical nature of the history of music. “If we study the history of Western Classical music over the past 100 years, we shall see that every 10-20 years one maverick comes whose genius forces people to take note of that particular genre of music.” This decade belongs to Dudamel and his innovative ways. The idea of “popification” of classical music in films also needs to be examined critically. Coming on the heels of the Baroque style, Bach and Mozart secularised music like never before. “To their contemporaries, they too were pop stars. Same with Tchaikovsky. What was once pop has now become classical. Classical music as a genre is not static; the definitions are constantly changing. Jazz was borne out of experimentation and yet seen as a serious, almost classical form,” says Ashok. This perchance explains the sentiment of protectiveness about Jazz when a film like "La La Land" seeks to capitalise on it. Rao-Erdem, a self-proclaimed purist, understands well that this overprotective attitude may not serve the cause of classical music. “Chinese opera music is a dying form. The Chinese are extremely purist in their treatment of arts. The government is trying hard to resurrect the opera tradition but lack of innovation is their biggest enemy.” She adds, “Many small orchestras in Europe have run out of business due to their inability to keep pace with the changing world around them. Maybe they needed something like Pavarotti and Friends.” New tricks are needed for a brave new world. Before the 20th century “rules of concert etiquette” made the concerts stifling and somewhat painful, listening to classical music was a full-bodied social experience. As a backlash to the mechanical production of music, live concerts attempted to retain their charm and aura by putting in place certain rules of engagement for the audience. Today, a minuscule fraction of the world population goes to classical concerts. As per a 2012 study by the National Endowment for Arts, 8.8% of Americans had attended a classical concert in the last 12 months. No wonder then that the major symphonic orchestras in the USA are facing the music. While the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York City Opera filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and 2013 respectively, other major outfits have seen strikes in the last five years. Is the purist, then, not the biggest enemy of the art it most zealously aims to protect? Ashok gives an interesting response to this. “Purists are important for the growth of music. Great art always emerges out of purism. Constraints and not absolute freedom creates it. John Cage’s 4’33” is an example of compulsive experimentation. But will it, should it, be considered a classic? It is only when there is a keenly felt need to break away that music flourishes. That need is a gift of the purist to the experimentalist.” Sen’s view of the purist is a little less charitable. “I think the purist still has the form at its purest. I see no bother in an unschooled listener getting exposed to the music through some over-accessible form of it. It can often be a gateway.” Rao-Erdem, on the other hand, stands her ground by asserting that only the presentation and not the music per se should be open to improvisation. Individual and society; tradition and individual talent et al are bound to be locked in an unrelenting scrimmage. What may benefit the purist and the experimentalist is broadening the base of the audience, aided by innovative ways of engagement. If a "La La Land" inspires some YouTube searches for “Jazz,” so be it! (WION)

Can classical music survive without shedding its obsession with purism?

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