Branford Marsalis

The flu couldn't stop Branford Marsalis from soaring at The Pabst Theater - https://t.co/QtvOPB5Jq0 https://t.co/bBFjj7lCpg

— Jazz music view (@Jazzmusicview) April 12, 2019

Branford Marsalis and Kurt Elling

Branford Marsalis and Kurt Elling to release new album June 10 on @MarsalisMusic and @SonyMasterworks/OKeh: https://t.co/EpMZEWEwBP

— DownBeat Magazine (@DownBeatMag) April 7, 2016

Branford Marsalis and Kurt Elling

By Howard Mandel, for Jazz Beyond Jazz
December 15th, 2015

Saxophonist Branford Marsalis's quartet and singer Kurt Elling prepared for their upcoming recording in a rare four-night stand at Snug Harbor in New Orleans last week, and photo-journalist extraordinaire Marc PoKempner went each night, enthralled.

"It was sort of an open rehearsal for the recording, so the set list was the same every night," PoKempner reported by phone, "but it changed a lot, too. The first night Kurt asked the crowd, 'Does anyone here speak Portuguese? If so, you're going to want to leave now,' because he sang a lyric in Portuguese, reading it phonetically off some paper, and slaughtered the language. But by the fourth night, he had it down."

PoKempner knows Elling from Chicago, but he says in NOLA, Kurt learned he had to almost holler for attention. "He isn't known here, he doesn't perform here. People had come to hear Branford, who'd start out each night with what I gather was the Tonight Show theme.

He's got a very energetic, swinging, fun band [Joey Calderazzo, piano; Eric Revis, bass; Justin Faulkner, drums] and though he himself isn't the most physically expressive, he blows his ass off, has a very strong tone, and gets up to play. He blew some very abstract stuff, even like something Fred Anderson would have played — but always brought those breaks back to the swinging, melodic hook. Branford's band did a couple of songs before Kurt came out.

read more: http://kurtelling.com/news/press_article_978.php

Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo Swing Hard....

This is not a blog about golf -- although the two jazz musicians/golf players here in question will tell you their attempts to master the sport require almost as much time and energy as prepping for shows at the world's top music venues.

Yet, when it comes to saxophonist Branford Marsalis and pianist Joey Calderazzo, golf factors into the story only because they first started dueting publicly at charity tournaments, which eventually led to a much-lauded duo gig at the 2009 Newport Jazz Festival -- and now, at long last, a full-length CD:Songs of Mirth and Melancholy.

Why is this a big deal? For starters, true piano/saxophone duos are rare, especially in jazz (Google it!). And secondly, Marsalis and Calderazzo have been performing together in ensemble settings (namely the Grammy-winning Branford Marsalis Quartet) for more than a decade, yet never recorded as a duo until now.

More on:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristi-york-wooten/marsalis-calderazzo-jazz_b_894069.html

New York Philharmonic “Concerts in the Parks”: Branford Marsalis

New York Philharmonic “Concerts in the Parks": Branford Marsalis

July 14 at 8:PM

Boreyko and the Philharmonic return with a new guest, the saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who performs concertos by Glazunov and Schulhoff; music by Liadov and Prokofiev (a suite from “Romeo and Juliet") completes the program.

Great Lawn, Central Park, enter between 79th and 86th Sts. Fireworks follow each concert.

Note: For information on the Philharmonic's concerts at Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, at Cunningham Park, in Queens, and on Staten Island, use the web site.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=60416

Connick, Marsalis Celebrate New Orleans Roots

Photo by  >>  Frank Hunter/Palma Kolansky

by Terry Gross
October 12, 2005 - Musicians Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, two New Orleans natives, have been friends for years -- back to the days when Connick took piano lessons from Marsalis' father, Ellis.

And when their hometown was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Marsalis and Connick sought to help any way they could. Marsalis' brother Wynton organized a benefit concert in New York. And Branford's label, Marsalis Music, is releasing a benefit CD, Celebration of New Orleans Music to Benefit the Musicares Hurricane Relief.

Connick returned to the city in early September, navigating its streets by boat and offering help where he could. Some of his experiences there became stories he submitted to NBC's Today show. As the extent of the disaster became evident, Connick signed on with Habitat for Humanity to serve as honorary chair of "Operation Home Delivery," an effort to rebuild housing for families along the Gulf Coast.
Complete on  >>  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4954281

Sally Beamish and Branford Marsalis: a blast of sax in the glens

01.08.2009 / Telegraph.co.uk / Hilary Whitney
She was an acclaimed classical composer living in rural Scotland; he was the hip king of saxophone from Louisiana. In theory, their paths should never have crossed. But, in a chance encounter, the rarefied worlds of jazz and classical collided, and the meeting gave birth to a beautiful new musical direction for both of them that will be premiered this month.

In the summer of 2006, award-winning composer Sally Beamish was struggling to finish a commission for violist Lawrence Power and the Scottish Ensemble. "The starting point was a poem, 'Lullaby of the Snow', which was supposed to have been sung by a mother to her child fleeing the massacre at Glencoe, but, despite my excitement at for the story, something was missing."

So, when she discovered that world-renowned saxophonist Branford Marsalis was to perform her concerto The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, she seized the opportunity to put her work on hold and went to see Marsalis play. "I was intrigued," she says, "that this classical work of mine, inspired by Orkney and traditional Swedish herding calls, should have been picked up by an American jazz musician I'd never worked with."

Beamish arrived at the festival while Marsalis was rehearsing. "It was astonishing to sit at the back of this vast auditorium and listen to Branford's reading of a piece that had been played only by classical soloists. Brandford's sound was warm, rich and expressive, with its own keening speech-like freedom."

Beamish admits to being nervous about the actual performance of her work in this alien environment. "I was worried about how it would go down with a jazz audience. The atmosphere at a jazz festival is completely different from a classical music event. People hang around to get a taste of a concert before moving on to listen to something else, and I wondered whether the audience would stick around long enough to 'get' it. But people didn't walk out. They stayed and listened.

"Branford's performance was a revelation. When he plays classical music, he plays in a classical way, and, while his improvisation was jazz-infused, he didn't turn it into a jazz piece."

After the concert, Beamish and Marsalis talked for hours, and when Beamish returned home and resumed work on her commission, she realised that her encounter with Marsalis had opened her mind to new possibilities for the piece. "The material, which had been sitting dully on the page, came to life, and a strong jazz element suddenly began to emerge," she says. "It all flowed quite naturally; I didn't have to use any of the techniques of note manipulation that I often use."

The result, a concerto for viola and strings entitled Under the Wing of the Rock – a line from the lullaby – was premiered in October 2006.Shortly afterwards, Beamish rescored a new version for saxophone, which she dedicated to Marsalis although she balked at sending it to him: "I just couldn't see when he'd ever get to play it."

Then, in autumn 2008, Beamish was asked if she would write something for Celtic Connections, the annual festival held in Glasgow to celebrate traditional Scottish music and its connections with cultures across the globe. Beamish realised this would be the perfect platform for the saxophone version of Under the Wing, a Celtic-inspired piece by a classical composer, performed by an American jazz musician.

To Beamish's delight, Marsalis agreed to perform Under the Wing at the festival on the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns's birth. She was keen for Marsalis to make the piece his own. "I told him that I didn't want him to change the orchestral parts, but, if there was a place where he wanted to put them on hold and do his own thing, he could. He replied that he didn't want to do that because it's all in the music already. I think that's probably because it's so inspired by him."

That maybe the case, but, as Marsalis points out: "People in symphonic circles love the idea of improvisation because it's such a mystery to them. But it's Sally's piece, and my job is to interpret it.

"Improvisation in classical music comes from tone, timbre and tempo. There are lots of things you can do within the structure of the piece without suddenly stopping and doing a solo."

Marsalis is a huge fan of the original version but has been careful not to listen to it too often. "It's beautiful, but there are things you can do on the viola that you can't do on the sax and vice verse, and, as I've only got one shot at playing it, I really need to play the piece myself and start hearing it in my head."

Their collaboration won't end with the festival – Beamish is currently writing some original string scoring for Marsalis's jazz quartet. "Not backing music," she says, "but something he and his colleagues can bounce off, creating a new dynamic." However, she is adamant she's not about to change direction musically. "There have always been a lot of jazz inflections and harmonies in my music, but I'd be very hesitant to go too far down that road. I think the reason that Branford is interested in working with me is because I'm not a jazz musician – there's so much interest and stimulation we can bring to each other's worlds.

"I don't know when I've looked forward to a premiere with more anticipation and excitement."
http://www.marsalismusic.com/ink-article.php?album=&&ink=3484&&artist=1&&chi=1

Branford Marsalis and the Philarmonia Brasileira

Ringo H.W. Chiu / For the Los Angeles Times
The sax player and the Brazilian chamber group explore the works of Darius Milhaud and Heitor Villa-Lobos in an uneven performance at Royce Hall.

Make a poet a diplomat and good may come of it. France sent the great humanist writer Paul Claudel to Brazil during World War I, and food found its way from South America to France during a period of privation. So too did Brazilian music, once the war was won.
Make a composer a diplomat and cultures tend to merge. Claudel brought Darius Milhaud to Rio in 1917 as his secretary, and there this restlessly multi-stylistic Parisian composer befriended his Brazilian contemporary, Heitor Villa-Lobos. The latter quickly turned Francophile. The former became besotted by Brazilian music. Together, they created a hybrid Brazilian music, filtered through a French sensibility, that instantly captivated the world.

It still does. On Friday night, saxophonist Branford Marsalis brought his Marsalis Brasilianos express -- a Milhaud/Villa-Lobos program with a São Paulo chamber orchestra, Philarmonia Brasileira, touring the States this month -- to UCLA's Royce Hall.
The occasion was the 50th anniversary next year (but this season) of Villa-Lobos' death. But Milhaud, one of the first classical composers to write a jazz-inspired masterpiece, seemed just as much inspiration to a jazz musician who is also at home performing with orchestras in concert halls.

Villa-Lobos and Milhaud were two of the most prolific of the 20th century's major composers. Each wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 scores, the vast majority of which are now neglected. Each coincidentally (or was it competitively?) turned out 18 string quartets and 12 symphonies.
Given the enormous potential, Friday's program was unimaginative. It centered on the composers' most famous works -- Villa-Lobos' "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5" and Mil- haud's jazz-flavored "La Création du Monde." In fact, these are Villa-Lobos' and Milhaud's only overplayed pieces.

By all accounts, the program was well rehearsed. It had been prepared in Brazil, and the orchestra's website (www.philarmoniabrasileira.com.br/) shows a punishing schedule of a different U.S. city every day this month. But at Royce, the small chamber group drawn from Philarmonia Brasileira felt ad hoc. No two players seemed to have the same style.
The strings were all over the place. One cellist, with many solos, displayed a vibrato so exaggerated that every note waddled into unfriendly neighboring pitch territory. The brass were undistinguished.

But I found the winds most fetching, especially an excellent clarinet player with a sense of swing. Percussion was hot.
Gil Jardim, the orchestra's founder, has an intriguing résumé. He roams widely, working regularly with many of the great names in Brazilian pop and jazz, along with his classical gigs. But here he appeared near characterless -- OK when his beat was steady, not OK when it wasn't.

Marsalis is another mystery. His technique is competent. He doesn't have that sugary sweet vibrato that European classical saxophonists often favor, especially on the soprano, and that can be a relief. But he plays the notes on the page dryly, as though classical music were an improviser's straitjacket.
He tentatively tried out a few expressive novelties, such as adding unusual accents to "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5," but that was hardly enough to counter the bland arrangement for soprano saxophone and orchestra of this piece, originally written for soprano and eight cellos.

Milhaud's Brazilian side was little in evidence. "La Création du Monde," for which Marsalis joined the ensemble, is African-themed. Funkiness is period practice, if Milhaud's recording in 1932, nine years after the ballet's premiere, is anything to go by. Still, this is wondrous music, and wondrousness was not conveyed Friday.
Lest any unfamiliar Villa-Lobos or Milhaud intrude, the program began and ended with bland works by Camargo Guarnieri and Lea Freire. I don't get it. How is it possible that a musician with a creative streak could wind himself up and mechanically play back this same program night after night all month? Marsalis must be bursting at the seams.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-brasilianos13-2008oct13,0,5963977.story