Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in Ann Arbor 3/10/09
Last year I was lucky enough to see the LCJO with Wynton Marsalis. This year I was also just as lucky, and I was able to go with some friends, too!
For the first half of the show, they played stuff from the Thelonious Monk book. Thelonious Monk is typically kind of hard to listen to, but the arrangements that they played were pretty listenable. The only one whose name I remember is Criss Cross.
The second half, they played songs out of the Blue Note label. When Wynton announced that they were gonna play “Blues Walk,” I expected a pretty uptempo major straightahead bebop blues. But apparently there is a difference between Blues Walk and The Blues Walk.
Wynton is pretty good at telling random stories. Like he talked about Lee Morgan and his funny-named albums: “Delightfulee,” “Cornbread,” “The Rumproller.” One of the band members mentioned “The Gigolo” and then Wynton Marsalis made a quip about how that’s why Lee Morgan isn’t here with us today (he was cheating on his girlfriend and she shot him. Sometimes, though, I really think that Wynton is making shit up! Okay, not really. He just knows a lot about Jazz and Jazz history. And classical music. He’s pretty much a genius.
The musical aptitude of the whole group was pretty damn good. Seeing guys play this well makes me wish I played Piano, Drums, Saxophone, etc. And it makes me want to practice my trumpet some more. Maybe I can work on my chops after graduation…