PRESS RELEASE: Wynton Marsalis is scheduled to release his latest CD The Spiritual Side of Wynton Marsalis which will hit stores on October 22.
This latest release is collected from seven previously recorded albums. It also features an unreleased treasure, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” sung by gospel legend Marion Williams, with the masterful Eric Reed on piano. Ms. Williams sang this impromptu gift during the recording session for In This House, On This Morning for the members of the septet. According to Marsalis, she said “I am so impressed with all these young men, playing so well and being so wonderful to me.” The musicians were all so deeply moved that 20 years after the initial recording session Marsalis remembered that it was still in the Sony vaults.
The tracks “I Hear a Knockin,’” “If I Hold On,” “Sing On,” and “To Higher Ground” have been selected from the CD Reeltime. This recording was a score for John Singleton’s film Rosewood, but it was not used in the final cut. According to Marsalis, the chief focus of this music was to “… give the listeners an accurate rendering of the visceral experience of small town southern music in the early 20th century, the variety of people and the intensity of their relationships.”
“Hymn,” “Processional,” “Holy Ghost,” “Benediction,” “Pot Blessed Dinner,” and “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” are from Marsalis’ first commissioned work for Jazz at Lincoln Center, In This House, On This Morning. It is a Mass in the form of a typical Afro-American church service. In 1992 pianist and former band-mate Marcus Roberts said of this composition, “… The first thing I find remarkable about it is that somebody who didn’t grow up attending regular Baptist church services could capture so authentically the feeling of that experience.” Marsalis developed that feeling through the “church” of American life in the South.
“Flee as a Bird to the Mountain” is a song that Wynton recorded with his septet at the Village Vanguard. Every December from the late ’80s to the mid ’90s, the septet played the Vanguard and would record every set. “The audiences loved the informal but structured way we played,” he said. “Performing in the most sacred of jazz’s clubs inspired us to play with a particular exuberance and depth.”
“Awakening” is from the ballet, Ghost Story, written for Chinese dancer and choreographer Zhong Mei Li. This piece tells the tale of a woman caught between the living world and the spirit realm. It, as well as Li’s choreography, pulls inspiration from Buddhist teachings about the cycle of life. Marsalis finds the blues relationship through the pentatonic scale and the bending of tones with yin and yang intentions.
“Oh We Have a Friend in Jesus” is from the Pulitzer Prize winning oratorio on American slavery, Blood on the Fields. Cassandra Wilson channels the hopes and cries of a slave woman finding liberation, through giving love, despite being spurned by the subject of her affection.
Finally, “Psalm 26” is a part of his 1991 album Uptown Ruler. The Uptown Ruler is a mythical figure from Mardi Gras lore who Marsalis describes as being “…accepted without question in the houses of worship, institutions of higher discourse and intellectual engagement, as well as places of ill repute and lower levels of social intercourse.” This selection, a duet of trumpet, is an introspective modern hymn.
Though a compilation, The Spiritual Side of Wynton Marsalis has a central artistic theme. It alternates slow and fast numbers, a repetition which represents the New Orleans funeral function – sorrowful but ultimately uplifting. From a single plaintive chant, to an instrumental reenactment of a Sunday service, to a full choir shouting for redemption, this new release is designed to celebrate our collective soul. We are uplifted by Marsalis’ supreme love for artistic excellence and that most pervasive of consciousnesses, the spirit.
Marsalis’ growth was grounded in Christian philosophy by his mother, and by his great aunt and uncle, Marguerite and Alphonse Lambert. Born in 1883, Alphonse was a stone cutter and an engraver for the cemeteries. He was also a Christian without denomination. “His proximity to death and the dead gave him a practical, albeit philosophical, spirituality,” Marsalis said. These teachings and the lessons he learned about soul while listening to his father and the other jazz musicians talk, taught him how to accept the spirit in its many forms.
After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Marsalis’ parents decided to enroll their children in a previously all-white Catholic school in Kenner, Louisiana, Our Lady of Perpetual Health. There, catechism classes were mandatory. He loved the stories and teachings of both Testaments. However, the de facto segregated status of the Catholic Church in his town made it impossible for him to completely embrace the experience, and he often refused to attend Mass on Sundays. As a teen, his spirituality grew outside the confines of the church. Perhaps that’s why the sermon section of his 1992 Mass, In This House, On This Morning, is entitled “In the Sweet Embrace of Life.”
Marsalis has embraced the sanctity of worldliness throughout his career. In his 2011 Harvard University lecture, “Music as Metaphor,” he states, “the struggle at the heart of humankind and the central debate of our constitution has been resolved by (American) musical arts for over a century.” It lifts us out of the human problem of “Me vs. You” and “Us vs. Y’all,” and brings us to the understanding – “All of Us.”
Marsalis’ philosophy on music is steeped in optimism because he believes that the human spirit is irrepressible. “Spiritual,” he says, “means the innermost reflections on the most high and on an all-pervasive consciousness. It is a basic warmth and acceptance of human beings in the glory of unruly humanness.” He communicates this understanding through an integrated sound informed by the blues and the New Orleans tradition. You will find this spirit in every phrase of his recordings. It rings out in Jeremiah Wright’s reading of Stanley Crouch’s sermon on The Majesty of the Blues. This same spirit informs the social messages in his later works such as From the Plantation to the Penitentiary and He and She – it’s even in the piercing sound of his trumpet, crying out over Charnett Moffett, Kenny Kirkland and Jeff “Tain” Watts on Black Codes (From the Underground).
This latest release is collected from seven previously recorded albums. It also features an unreleased treasure, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” sung by gospel legend Marion Williams, with the masterful Eric Reed on piano. Ms. Williams sang this impromptu gift during the recording session for In This House, On This Morning for the members of the septet. According to Marsalis, she said “I am so impressed with all these young men, playing so well and being so wonderful to me.” The musicians were all so deeply moved that 20 years after the initial recording session Marsalis remembered that it was still in the Sony vaults.
The tracks “I Hear a Knockin,’” “If I Hold On,” “Sing On,” and “To Higher Ground” have been selected from the CD Reeltime. This recording was a score for John Singleton’s film Rosewood, but it was not used in the final cut. According to Marsalis, the chief focus of this music was to “… give the listeners an accurate rendering of the visceral experience of small town southern music in the early 20th century, the variety of people and the intensity of their relationships.”
“Hymn,” “Processional,” “Holy Ghost,” “Benediction,” “Pot Blessed Dinner,” and “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” are from Marsalis’ first commissioned work for Jazz at Lincoln Center, In This House, On This Morning. It is a Mass in the form of a typical Afro-American church service. In 1992 pianist and former band-mate Marcus Roberts said of this composition, “… The first thing I find remarkable about it is that somebody who didn’t grow up attending regular Baptist church services could capture so authentically the feeling of that experience.” Marsalis developed that feeling through the “church” of American life in the South.
“Flee as a Bird to the Mountain” is a song that Wynton recorded with his septet at the Village Vanguard. Every December from the late ’80s to the mid ’90s, the septet played the Vanguard and would record every set. “The audiences loved the informal but structured way we played,” he said. “Performing in the most sacred of jazz’s clubs inspired us to play with a particular exuberance and depth.”
“Awakening” is from the ballet, Ghost Story, written for Chinese dancer and choreographer Zhong Mei Li. This piece tells the tale of a woman caught between the living world and the spirit realm. It, as well as Li’s choreography, pulls inspiration from Buddhist teachings about the cycle of life. Marsalis finds the blues relationship through the pentatonic scale and the bending of tones with yin and yang intentions.
“Oh We Have a Friend in Jesus” is from the Pulitzer Prize winning oratorio on American slavery, Blood on the Fields. Cassandra Wilson channels the hopes and cries of a slave woman finding liberation, through giving love, despite being spurned by the subject of her affection.
Finally, “Psalm 26” is a part of his 1991 album Uptown Ruler. The Uptown Ruler is a mythical figure from Mardi Gras lore who Marsalis describes as being “…accepted without question in the houses of worship, institutions of higher discourse and intellectual engagement, as well as places of ill repute and lower levels of social intercourse.” This selection, a duet of trumpet, is an introspective modern hymn.
Though a compilation, The Spiritual Side of Wynton Marsalis has a central artistic theme. It alternates slow and fast numbers, a repetition which represents the New Orleans funeral function – sorrowful but ultimately uplifting. From a single plaintive chant, to an instrumental reenactment of a Sunday service, to a full choir shouting for redemption, this new release is designed to celebrate our collective soul. We are uplifted by Marsalis’ supreme love for artistic excellence and that most pervasive of consciousnesses, the spirit.
Marsalis’ growth was grounded in Christian philosophy by his mother, and by his great aunt and uncle, Marguerite and Alphonse Lambert. Born in 1883, Alphonse was a stone cutter and an engraver for the cemeteries. He was also a Christian without denomination. “His proximity to death and the dead gave him a practical, albeit philosophical, spirituality,” Marsalis said. These teachings and the lessons he learned about soul while listening to his father and the other jazz musicians talk, taught him how to accept the spirit in its many forms.
After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Marsalis’ parents decided to enroll their children in a previously all-white Catholic school in Kenner, Louisiana, Our Lady of Perpetual Health. There, catechism classes were mandatory. He loved the stories and teachings of both Testaments. However, the de facto segregated status of the Catholic Church in his town made it impossible for him to completely embrace the experience, and he often refused to attend Mass on Sundays. As a teen, his spirituality grew outside the confines of the church. Perhaps that’s why the sermon section of his 1992 Mass, In This House, On This Morning, is entitled “In the Sweet Embrace of Life.”
Marsalis has embraced the sanctity of worldliness throughout his career. In his 2011 Harvard University lecture, “Music as Metaphor,” he states, “the struggle at the heart of humankind and the central debate of our constitution has been resolved by (American) musical arts for over a century.” It lifts us out of the human problem of “Me vs. You” and “Us vs. Y’all,” and brings us to the understanding – “All of Us.”
Marsalis’ philosophy on music is steeped in optimism because he believes that the human spirit is irrepressible. “Spiritual,” he says, “means the innermost reflections on the most high and on an all-pervasive consciousness. It is a basic warmth and acceptance of human beings in the glory of unruly humanness.” He communicates this understanding through an integrated sound informed by the blues and the New Orleans tradition. You will find this spirit in every phrase of his recordings. It rings out in Jeremiah Wright’s reading of Stanley Crouch’s sermon on The Majesty of the Blues. This same spirit informs the social messages in his later works such as From the Plantation to the Penitentiary and He and She – it’s even in the piercing sound of his trumpet, crying out over Charnett Moffett, Kenny Kirkland and Jeff “Tain” Watts on Black Codes (From the Underground).
Comments