‘The Best of the JLCO’
Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
Frederick P. Rose Hall
Streaming Through June 21

The tentpole event at Jazz at Lincoln Center over the weekend was titled “The Best of the JLCO,” and it was hosted and curated by the artistic director, Wynton Marsalis. The idea was to end the season with what was essentially a greatest hits program. For once, JALC wasn’t promising anything new, but offering a chance to revisit some familiar favorites. 

Thus I was surprised when the evening I attended included an incident that I have never experienced previously at a JALC event, or at pretty much any other performance venue. Both before the concert and during the intermission, we were treated to a brilliant performance in the Ertegun Atrium by a high school-age all-star band, the Jazz Houston Youth Orchestra, directed by Vincent Gardner, more customarily the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s lead trombonist. 

Near the close of the intermission, the JHYO lunged into one of the most thrilling works in the entire literature of orchestral jazz, “23 Degrees North, 82 Degrees West.” It was doubly satisfying to hear this explosively exciting work played perfectly by a group of extremely young players — I doubt their grandparents were even alive when Bill Russo in 1952 composed it for Stan Kenton’s Orchestra. I was so caught up in the experience that I actually missed the start of the second half by the orchestra proper.

The title, often abbreviated to “23° N, 82° W,” designates the longitude and latitude of Cuba — not only as a geographical location but as a specific moment in time in a pre-Castro Havana. Russo’s piece is powerful not merely because he uses latin polyrhythms as filtered through his own artistic sensibility; Russo wasn’t merely imitating and appropriating a foreign, non-white culture but was interpreting it, much as Duke Ellington would do famously with his “Far East Suite.” It’s a Russo-Kenton take on Latin music that isn’t trying to pass itself off as the real thing.

JALC itself played up the contrast: The concert opened with a genuine slice of Afro-Cuban jazz, an original work by the orchestra’s longtime bassist, the Bronx-born Carlos Enrique. “Two-Three’s Adventure” is a jazz-mambo hybrid that does full justice to both sides of the equation, described by Mr. Marsalis as: “We get to find out what happens to a two-three clavé.” It began with drummer Obed Calvaire playing actual clavé sticks while the seven brass players clapped to the beat and the five saxophones played the first iteration of the melody. The piece went in and out of Latin 6/8 time, with solos by the young pianist Joe Block, hard-hitting trumpeter Kenny Rampton, and the composer, Mr Enriequez himself.

The first half ended with a further variation on the same idea, Mr. Marsalis’s  “Mendizorroza Swing.” This was another piece inspired by Spanish culture, dedicated to a town in northern Spain where Mr. Marsalis and the orchestra have played many times. Unlike those two numerically designated works mentioned above, Mr. Marsalis employed no Latin effects whatsoever; rather, he rendered this piece entirely in the familiar vocabulary of North American orchestral jazz.

Mr. Marsalis played his most significant solo of the evening and there also was a forceful tenor saxophone solo, somewhat reminiscent of Sonny Rollins’s late-1950s stuttering style, by the exceptional Chris Lewis, who had already offered a rapturously romantic statement on “Bearden (The Block)” a multi-part work by trombonist Chris Crenshaw.

The second half began with a highly spiritual piece, “Serenity, Salvation, Reflection,” which started off with the composer, trumpeter Marcus Printup, playing a dramatic unaccompanied cadenza and an earthy solo by Mr. Crenshaw.  

In addition to the band originals, there were three arrangements of more familiar works. First was Walter Blandings’s orchestral setting of part of  Sonny Rollins’s “Freedom Suite,” spotlighting a tenor and drum exchange between Abdias Armenteros and Mr. Calvaire as well as a soulful solo by guest trombonist Dion Tucker. This was followed by a suitably mournful setting for John Coltrane’s “Alabama,” a highly political piece decrying the murder of four girls in the infamous bombing of the Birmingham Baptist Church in 1963, which Mr. Marsalis described as “a long form chant” featuring a suitably mournful baritone saxophone statement by Paul Nedzela.  Regrettably, the piece seemed strangely in tune with the current political and social moment.

The other interpretation of an existing work was considerably more whimsical: Trombonist Vincent Gardner, in addition to conducting the highly impressive Houston orchestra, came out and sang a jivey and fun vocal on the 1925 pop song “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.” Then, for the final number, he led the orchestra and soloed on “Up from Down” from his own extended work inspired by Langston Hughes and his “Jesse B. Semple” stories. Ironically, while the character is affectionately known as Simple, this music is anything but; rather, it’s burningly fast, intricate, and complicated, inspiring fiery solos from Mr. Marsalis and Joe Block, as well as the composer. 

It was a euphoric show all the way around. While we came in expecting a Wynton-centric program, it was no disappointment that the star of the evening turned out to be the formidable Vincent Gardner. Leave it to Jazz at Lincoln Center to offer something new even when that’s the last thing we were expecting.