Wynton Marsalis....

Envied conservative
Indifferent to the critical ones of mediocre and envious for its " conservadorism" - or simply for making propaganda of tender the Movado clocks or using Armani - Wynton Marsalis, 47 years, is always to prove that it is not, only, the most complete trompetista appeared in the jazz after Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown. Beyond an enviable workmanship as composer - it raised that it to the heights of Aaron Copland, Charles Ives & Cia, with the conquest, in 1997, of the Pulitzer Prize of music - the leader of the young lions of the decade of 80 is the head and the soul of the Jazz at Lincoln Center, the most important institution of promotion and spreading in this manner of musical expression that is the conjugated past and the future in the present time.
The definition above synthecizes the thought of the great musician such which displayed in interview the Jennifer Odell, in the edition of this month of the Downbeat. Wynton was elect in the countersignature of the readers of the magazine, one more time, the trompetista of the year, to the front of Dave Douglas - of its generation - and of Roy Hargrove - 10 years younger. E also, a time more, to the 78 years, Sonny Rollins surpassed Pat Metheny in the category Artist of the Year, and defeated Chris Potter in the classification of the best saxofonistas tenors. Metheny has 24 years to less of what the alive greater jazzman; Potter is 41 years younger.
The philosophy of Marsalis on the controversial question of what he is new or old, mainstream, beyond or world music, in jazz substance is one of the subjects of its more recent book, Moving you higher ground/How jazz can change your life (Random House, 208 pages, US$ 26), written in contribution with the historian Geoffrey C. Ward, former-publisher of the magazine American Heritage.
Soon in the first chapter (Discovering the joy of swinging, that is, discovering the joy of " suingar"), with same the clarity, intelligence and elegance of fraseado of its trompete, the author serves of swing - time to start to show as the jazz can modify our life, as it considers in the sub-heading of the workmanship. It writes: " The relation of the musician with the time can be of inestimable value to help it: 1) to adjust changes to it without losing the balance; 2) to dominate moments of crisis with clear thoughts; 3) to live the moment and to accept the reality, instead of forcing everybody to make the things in its way; 4) to concentrate itself exactly in a collective goal when its conception of the collective one is not the dominant one; 5) to know as and when to spend its energy individual".
Marsalis cites the septuagenário Sonny Rollins soon as bigger example of " to savoir faire" e of " to savoir vivre" indissociáveis of the spirit of the jazz. E also Thelonious Monk (1917-82). Both had always known " flutuar" in and for on the time, in the two felt of the word. " Almost always they are in saying that the time is our enemy, something to them that we cannot controlar" , the musician-ensaísta comments. " The time flies. It does not lose time. It makes this while you are young. We live in a culture guided for the young, in which to become old almost arrives to be a crime (…). But in the jazz, the time is its friend, and when you find its proper swing, in the truth, the time flies, yes. But it flies for where you want (...). That's the joy of swinging".
The new book of Wynton Marsalis is an excellent Christmas present for old or young any jazzófilo. It is enough that it has privacy with the English and is of good with the life.

Credit > Luiz Orlando Carneiro
Jornal do Brasil, Caderno B, 7 de dezembro de 2008