live

Coltrane’s A Love Supreme: Live in Amsterdam reissue from the Branford Marsalis Quartet out now and available on vinyl for the very first time

Available now in the U.S. is a reissue of the historic Marsalis Music DVD which includes a full live performance of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme suite by the Branford Marsalis Quartet at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis in 2003. The package also includes interview footage and an audio-only disc. 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Coltrane’s masterpiece. Pick up a copy of the Branford Marsalis Quartet’s live interpretation of the suite today at your favorite local music store, download the audio-only performance from your preferred digital retailer, or order a copy online.

Music on Vinyl has made this release available on vinyl for the very first time. Learn more about the vinyl package via their website or order it online today.

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Submitted by Bobby on June 5th, 2015 — 10:37am

'Well tempered' Marsalis brings jazz, pop, Baroque to Lexington stage

Publication: Kentucky.com
Author: Walter Tunis
Date: October 23, 2014

The true charm of the new Branford Marsalis album In My Solitude isn’t its meshing of jazz and classical genres, although the tightrope walk the celebrated saxophonist takes between the two is quite fascinating.
 
No, the most arresting aspect to the live recording, which will be released Tuesday, is its sound. With no accompaniment whatsoever, save for the acoustics of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the music of Marsalis sounds ancient — ghostly, even.
 
It could be the Wayne Shorter-like expression he conjures on soprano sax during the album-opening take on Steve Lacy’s Who Needs It or the luscious warmth that envelops I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together (the closing theme music from The Carol Burnett Show) or the glorious echo that surrounds all 10 tunes with a subtle, timeworn sheen.
 
On first listen, In My Solitude recalls the otherworldly recordings the great Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek cut for the European ECM label, especially the glorious works where he replaced a conventional rhythm section with the magnificent vocal command of the Hilliard Ensemble. True to ECM form, the resulting music leaned neither to the Hilliards’ love of tone and classical nuance or the Nordic blasts of improvisational chill that were earmarks of Garbarek’s playing.
 
What those records discovered was a fascinatingly stark musical world in between where the unison playing sounded like it had traveled through centuries from a land equally distant.
 
Marsalis’ playing on In My Solitude isn’t as removed or unsettled as Garbarek’s, but it’s just as beautifully indefinable. 

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Submitted by Bobby on October 23rd, 2014 — 01:15pm

Branford Marsalis - In My Solitude: Live at Grace Cathedral (2014)

Publication: Something Else!
Author: Nick Deriso
Date: October 7, 2014

Never one to shy away from a big moment, Branford Marsalis brought his saxophones — and nothing else — to one of jazz’s most iconic settings for what would become his first-ever unaccompanied performance and album.
 
The results, recorded in 2012 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and due October 21, 2014 via Marsalis Music-Okeh Records, doesn’t supercede Duke Ellington’s initial 1960s-era Sacred Concert — held there, as well — so much as endeavor to expand the vocabulary of that stirring triumph.
 
Ellington, back then, was focused on blending jazz, black gospel and classical into a kind of large-scale, yet intimate tapestry of emotion. Marsalis, as evidenced by his single-instrument vehicle, is crafting more in miniature on In My Solitude: Live at Grace Cathedral — but at the same time, pushing in his own way to blur the lines between post-bop jazz and contemporary classical. In place of the sacred, he delves into modernity of free-form improv. As such, this won’t translate for fans who’ve come to his music via tandem collaborations in pop music.
 
In fact, In My Solitude works diligently away from those expectations, as Marsalis tracks deeper into melody, and then into far more individualistic asides, while moving determinedly away from the bawdy shower of notes associated with rock and R&B. His work here, then, is apt to recall Sonny Rollins or Sam Newsome more than, say, Sting.
 
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Submitted by Bobby on October 8th, 2014 — 09:07am