Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla Master Zakir Hussain, 73, Succumbs to Illness
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
New Orleans’ most celebrated jazz family, led by the patriarch, Ellis Marsalis, will tour for the first time together beginning Feb. 23, 2003. The concerts with Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo, Jason and Ellis will take place in U.S. and Canadian performing art centers, and are in support of the February 4 album, The Marsalis Family: A Jazz Celebration (Marsalis Music), a PBS special to premiere February 20 and Spring DVD release.
All four multimedia events were inspired by and document an historic August 2001 New Orleans concert with the family, an occasion that marked Ellis’ retirement from teaching duties at the University of New Orleans, and the school’s establishment of a chair in his name. Before a packed house in the Kiefer UNO
Lakefront Arena, the Marsalis family along with bassist Roland Guerin and a special guest appearance by Harry Connick Jr., were so inspired by each other’s presence that, as Delfeayo puts it, the performance “reflected our family collectively and individually.”
Branford sums up the results by noting that, “Everybody came to play the music as well as they possibly could play it.” The spirited results, by turns fiercely swinging and deeply lyrical, confirm that the company and the occasion elevated each family member to new levels of eloquence.
The tour dates are as follows:
Feb. 23: Ottawa, ONT; National Arts Centre
Feb. 24: Toronto; Massey Hall
Feb. 25: Montreal; Wilfrid Pelletier Hall
Feb. 27: Schenectady, N.Y.; Proctor’s
Feb. 28: Syracuse, N.Y.; Landmark Theatre
March 1: Newark, N.J.; NJPAC
March 2: Philadelphia; Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center
March 3: Boston; Symphony Hall
“Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.
Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
Dec 12, 2024 1:58 AM
Cuban-American jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval and Harlem’s Apollo Theater were among the honorees at the 2024…
“With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.
Jan 2, 2025 10:50 AM
On Musho (Intakt), her recent duo album with pianist Alexander Hawkins, singer Sofia Jernberg interprets traditional…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
