(Pssst… I originally wrote this essay for a musicology class in March 2007. It’s been tinkered.)
I received an email from the University Musical Society (UMS) this January after the holiday break, advertising the society’s winter/spring lineup of shows. I scrolled through the list of performers—a classical pianist, an Irish dance company, a chamber orchestra—in order to find a show that might be, quite literally, worth the price of admission. I felt as if I hadn’t fully taken advantage of the numerous out-of-class opportunities offered through the University of Michigan, so I wanted to pick a show that tested my limits a little.
I eventually settled on a show entitled Songs We Love at Hill Auditorium, featuring Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Marsalis was one of the only performers I recognized in the UMS lineup. Well, actually, “recognized” might be too strong of a word. I knew he was a famous jazz musician, but I couldn’t name any of his specific works. In fact, I didn’t really know anything about jazz and couldn’t name any specific jazz works. But I wanted to learn. Marsalis seemed intriguing in other ways, too. My former music theory GSI, Kasaun Henry, had studied with Marsalis in New York and raved about his instrumental skills. I also looked up Marsalis online and learned he was the first jazz musician to win a Pulitzer Prize. So he had that going for him.
Knowing that tickets would probably sell out in cosmopolitan Ann Arbor, I quickly ordered a pair online. I even talked myself into selecting some of the best seats in Hill—fourth row from the front. I figured that if I were going to try out jazz, what better way to do it than at historic Hill Auditorium, in great seats, with the “most outstanding jazz musician and trumpeter of his generation?”¹ If I didn’t enjoy jazz under these conditions, I would never enjoy it.
* * *
On March 15th, one of my friends and I walked up State Street to Hill Auditorium. The time was about 7:50 p.m. As we passed North University Street, I could feel something unique in the air, an unmistakable buzz that radiated from the auditorium. I saw young, impeccably-dressed couples mingling on the front steps of Hill. I saw an old man and woman walking hand-in-hand across the street. (I know what you’re thinking—and no, they weren’t homeless.) Instead of the usual denizens of the Diag, I saw, in a rare sighting, the real Ann Arbor—educated, refined, and classy. Something special was brewing.
My guest and I passed our tickets to the usher and entered Hill. The elegant lobby seemed perfect for the crowd socializing about in it. I felt vaguely as if I were entering a grand hall in Vienna to listen to a Beethoven symphony. After all, I was about to witness the best of “America’s classical music” in one of its finest auditoriums (“finest” according to a venerable source—me). As we passed through the lobby into the main floor, I experienced the same sensation—the sense of smallness—as when I had walked for the first time into Michigan Stadium (The Big House). The passageways and exterior of both structures were deceptively intimate relative to the grandiosity of the arena. My sense of space had been distorted.
We found our seats with the help of one of the ushers, an elderly man who most assuredly had been volunteering at Hill since the Pre-Cambrian era. (It’s one of my favorite eras). The tickets were as good as advertised—fourth row from the front, to the right side of the main floor. The only downside was that I didn’t have a full view of the piano located on the other side of the stage.
At the time, I couldn’t help but look stare at the crowd that had packed the 4,000-seat auditorium. These people looked so eager, so visibly energized for the show that would soon begin. There’s something about this music that moves these people—I thought to myself before the show began—and I want to know what it is.
* * *
Wynton Marsalis and his band came on stage to a roaring, standing ovation at about 8:20 p.m. The band was comprised of fourteen men, including Marsalis himself. They wore black tuxedos and navy-blue bowties. They didn’t really walk or march as much as they strutted on stage. There was little uniformity in the band’s actions. I thought to myself that they weren’t stiff, haughty, and rigid they way I had perceived an orchestra. The band was arranged in three rows of four members with a pianist on the left-front of stage and a drummer tucked behind the pianist. Marsalis, the music director, sat in the middle of the top row. One final thought occurred to me as the lights dimmed and the crowded quieted: This orchestra didn’t look like the color of jazz as I had envisioned it. About a third of the Lincoln Center Orchestra were white, including, I would learn, two of its best soloists. The show began.
Marsalis opened with a brief introduction from the back row of the orchestra. “We’re here tonight to swing as hard as possible,” he said. “This is a meat-and-potatoes, cheeseburger-french-fries-and-a-milkshake, football-on-a-Saturday-afternoon kind of program.”² The crowd laughed. He then announced the band’s first piece, “Sunny Side of the Street” by Duke Ellington. In marked anticipation, the quiet crowd suddenly gasped, “Ohhh…”
The music started. With three trumpets, two trombones, and a handful of saxophones, the sound of brass dominated the piece. The full orchestra played together for a few moments, loud and forceful, establishing the basic melody and structure of the song. This is when “the revolving-door pattern of solos that would repeat—though never exactly the same way—throughout the evening”³ began. In these solos, members of the band, sitting casually and comfortably in their seats, would nod in approval at particularly masterful playing. At times, even, these other band members would smile, laugh, and talk with each other as if sharing a joke. It was all very casual, but the band members clearly loved the music. It seemed as though they would pay to see this concert.
The band played a few more songs, including their rendition of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” This was one of the few songs I might have been able to identify, but the melody was blurred to the point of making it unrecognizable to me.4 Various soloists—trumpeters, trombonists, saxophonists—would take turns as the rest of the band watched. Sometimes, the drummer or pianist would provide a steady backbeat for the solo. Often, though, a single band member performed as all of Hill and the rest of the band watched.
I can best describe the music as being very brassy. It had the unmistakable timbre of jazz, the kind of music one might hear while flipping through public radio or television. There was no singing at all and only a slight amount of harmony. If I had to peg it on a musicology syllabus, I would probably place in the swing era of Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman.4 But it wouldn’t fit perfectly here; Marsalis’s band seemed to be more comfortable performing abstract solos than playing as a group. The focus was on the talent and flair of the individual performer. Looking back, the band’s unsynchronized entrance onstage made sense; why would the band members coordinate their entrance onstage when they were rarely coordinating their playing?
After intermission, Marsalis announced that the band’s next piece would be “St. Louis Blues.” I had studied the song, originally composed by W.C. Handy and performed by Bessie Smith, in class. Like “Sweet Georgia Brown,” it was virtually unrecognizable to my ear; the song could have been a completely different piece. There was no singer. There were few harmonies or chords. The trumpets were muffled by strange looking apparatuses—one of which reminded me of a plastic top hat. There wasn’t really a melody. What would have been the melody was toyed with so much that it seemed to me as if each soloist were playing random notes. I had enjoyed the song as we had studied in class, but this version was too abstract for my taste.
By this time in the concert, about three-fourths of the way through, I realized I didn’t like jazz (or the kind of jazz I was witnessing at the time). I realized this fact because I was very bored, and you can only read the program/pamphlet thingie so many times for entertainment. Yet what made the biggest impression on me was that the concert was unquestionably a success to the majority of the audience. They applauded before (when an arrangement was introduced), during (after any of the solo performances), and after (a loud ovation) all of the pieces. The elderly women sitting next to me, for example, laughed at all of Marsalis’s bad jokes, but it was the music that really got to her. During one of the songs after intermission, I remember seeing her with her eyes closed and smiling, taking in the music as if the show were a religious service. Maybe it was akin to a religious experience for someone who had grown up on Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, and John Coltrane and linked Marsalis’s sound to her childhood. I’m right, there is something about this music that moves this woman—I thought to myself at the time—it’s a way for her to relive memories and reconnect with loved ones. If I were her, the music would move me too.
I don’t mean to say that the only way Marsalis’s music was appealing was because he had evoked memories. Many young people crowded into Hill that night who bought tickets to this concert because they loved the sound of jazz as Marsalis presented it. Rather, I mean to say that one of the key qualities of the Lincoln Center Band was their veneration of the past. Marsalis himself would use words like “masterful” or “classic” to describe an arrangement, an arrangement that was usually a standard from over fifty years ago. True, Marsalis and his band were sublime musicians in their own right, but they also sold tradition to their audience—and tradition can be appealing to all ages.
The last piece was a lengthy encore performance by only Marsalis, a trombonist, a drummer, and a bass player. The crowd was mostly on its feet at this point. (I was on my feet too, but mostly because I was ready to get the heck out of there). Standing on the left of stage, Marsalis bobbed around his unmuted trumpet in a circle as he played with his eyes closed, cheeks puffed out, and knees bending with the flow of the music. His fingers were a blur as they moved quickly over the valves of the trumpet. The sound itself was lively, brassy, and sharp. It was filled with slurs, arpeggios, and what seemed like modified scales. I may not have loved the music, but I still could appreciate and enjoy Marsalis’s talent.6,7
Endnotes:
1“Wynton.” 6 Apr. 2007 http://www.wmedev.com/flash/wynton4.html.
2Stewart, Will. “Marsalis Swings, and Then Some.” Ann Arbor News 16 Mar. 2007. http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/aanews/i….
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5After all, Marsalis’s band played a Duke Ellington arrangement.
6My mother actually offered to take me to see Marsalis in East Lansing no more than two months after I had written this essay. I declined.
7Images in this post courtesy of UMS (no. 1) and allaboutjazz.com… (nos. 2 and 3, depicting a concert in Philadelphia, PA).