The Voice

Issue date: 3/26/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment

A Pulitzer Prize-winning musician, Marsalis also took home a Grammy for this album in 1985.

"As always, we came here to swing-as hard as possible," declared Wynton Marsalis to his audience as he and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra took the stage.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Wynton Marsalis performed at the Hill Auditorium on Thursday, Mar. 15 at 8 p.m. "The Songs We Love" was the theme of this concert. With this topic, Marsalis aimed to eliminate generation gaps by playing the "songs that we love" with their classical arrangements to a current audience.

The group began with Duke Ellington's arrangement of "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and they did exactly as Marsalis said they would: they "took soul and spread it all over this hall." Gershwin's "Fascinating Rhythm" followed, and the audience finally got to hear Marsalis' legendary trumpet skills, which, of course, did not disappoint. "Blue Skies," arranged by the Benny Goodman Orchestra, was the first piece of the evening that used trumpet attachments, called mutes, which modify the sounds of the instruments.

"Sweet Georgia Brown" was the fourth number, which brought oohs and aahs from the audience, and was concluded with wild applause and whistles. Marsalis rotated to the front and center to receive the position of prestige, and added comical playing to the appreciative audience and commented on the playfulness: "Once you're in a band for a while, you start to play with each other. Maybe we feeling the swing in a different place." Stephanie Rennane, a viewer from the balcony with an appreciation for jazz said, "The band works together really well. It seems like they're having a good time up there." Joe Temperley, a horn player, was highlighted during the next song of "My Funny Valentine", which was also met with audience aahs.

A Dizzy Gillespie hit and "Tea for Two" preceded "Just Friends," which had a powerful, light - hearted ending that was mirrored with Marsalis' seemingly stand up-esque responses to the track title: "Just friends-those are two of the saddest words you can ever hear. 'Don't you know who I am? I am not a friend. I thought you liked me.'" Oliver Nelson's "Down by the Riverside" concluded the agenda before the intermission.

The concert resumed with Perry Wilkins's arrangement of "All the Leaves" for Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Carter's "All of Me," which "showed everyone in the world what to do with saxophones. I know they look pretty and stuff with all these keys, but you got to write for them."

The show ended with several big numbers: Wycliff "Pinecone" Gordon's Saint Louis Blues; "I Can't Get Started with You" which featured the trumpet phenomenon of Ryan "The King" Kisor; John Coltrane's arrangement of "My Favorite Things," which was a definite crowd favorite; Billy Strayhorn's arrangement of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" which was received with audible excitement from the audience; and an encore of five, featuring Marsalis on trumpet.

Marsalis left his audience with one request: "I want y'all to write your Congress people to pass a law that no concert can be played without blues. It's the blues. That's all you need-some apple pie and some blues."

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