{"title":"Wynton Marsalis","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eWynton Marsalis received his first trumpet at six, a gift from New Orleans trumpeter Al Hirt, his father’s employer and friend. By fourteen he was performing the Haydn Trumpet Concerto with the New Orleans Symphony. By seventeen he had won the Outstanding Brass Soloist award at Tanglewood. He arrived at Juilliard in 1979 intending to pursue a classical career, changed his mind, joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1980, toured Japan with Herbie Hancock in 1981, and in 1982 became the first musician signed by a major label for both jazz and classical work simultaneously when Columbia took him on in both capacities. He was twenty. His second album “Think of One” (Columbia, 1983), named after the Thelonious Monk composition, introduced the Wynton Marsalis Quintet: Branford Marsalis on saxophone, Kenny Kirkland on piano, Charles Fambrough on bass and Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums, a group that applied post-bop rigor to the jazz tradition with a directness and technical command that nobody had attempted publicly at that scale in over a decade. He won Grammy Awards in both jazz and classical categories in 1983, the first musician to do so in the same year. He co-founded the Classical Jazz program at Lincoln Center in 1987, which became Jazz at Lincoln Center, and he has been its artistic director ever since. “Blood on the Fields” (Columbia, 1997), a three-hour oratorio on slavery, won the Pulitzer Prize: the first time the prize had been awarded for jazz, or for any non-classical music. Eight Grammy Awards in total. His centrality to American jazz institutions for three decades has made him a celebrated and contested figure simultaneously, which is true of most people who hold that much influence over a living art form.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"wynton-marsalis-think-of-one-1983-japanese-cbs-sony-vinyl-lp","title":"Wynton Marsalis - Think of One (1983 Japanese CBS\/Sony Vinyl LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWynton Marsalis - \u003cem\u003eThink of One\u003c\/em\u003e | Vinyl LP, 1983 Japanese CBS\/Sony (25AP 2658)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eMarsalis’s second album and the record that confirmed his quintet as the most important new group in 1980s jazz\u003c\/strong\u003e, with Branford Marsalis on saxophones, Kenny Kirkland on piano and Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eA Monk title track, an Ellington closing, a Kirkland original and four Marsalis compositions\u003c\/strong\u003e, mixing post-bop originals with a respect for the jazz tradition that defined Marsalis’s early career\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eGrammy winner for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist\u003c\/strong\u003e, the same year Marsalis won the classical Grammy for his trumpet concertos, making him the first artist to win both categories in a single ceremony\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWynton Marsalis was 21 when this was recorded. His debut album had appeared the year before and announced his talent, but \u003cem\u003eThink of One\u003c\/em\u003e is where the working band comes into focus. Kenny Kirkland’s piano playing is a revelation across these eight tracks, comping with rhythmic precision and taking solos that are inventive without being showy. Jeff Watts, barely into his twenties, already has his own drum sound and an instinct for shaping each track differently depending on who is soloing. Branford Marsalis (on tenor and soprano, though uncredited on this Japanese pressing) adds a second voice to the front line, and his interplay with his brother on “Later” and “Knozz-Moe-King” shows two musicians who grew up hearing the same music and process it through different temperaments. Two bassists split the album: Phil Bowler on four tracks, Ray Drummond on the other four.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe programme balances Marsalis originals with repertoire that signals where his interests lie. “Think of One” is Thelonious Monk, played with respect for its angularity. “Melancholia” is Duke Ellington, closing the album in under three minutes. “My Ideal” is a standard ballad. Kirkland contributes “Fuchsia”, which several critics singled out as the album’s most original composition. Marsalis’s own pieces, particularly “Knozz-Moe-King” and the nine-minute “The Bell Ringer”, are post-bop constructions that show his writing was developing alongside his playing. The album was produced by Marsalis himself with George Butler as executive producer, recorded and mixed at Mediasound in New York, with liner notes by Stanley Crouch and cover photography by Art Kane (whose 1958 “Great Day in Harlem” photograph is one of jazz’s most famous images). This 1983 Japanese pressing is manufactured by CBS\/Sony Inc. Catalogue number 25AP 2658 (original US Columbia catalogue: FC 38641).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CBS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44577977401403,"sku":null,"price":35.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/3203\/3339\/files\/IMG_9168.jpg?v=1792207042"},{"product_id":"wynton-marsalis-j-mood-1986-japanese-cbs-sony-vinyl-lp","title":"Wynton Marsalis - J Mood (1986 Japanese CBS\/Sony Vinyl LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWynton Marsalis - \u003cem\u003eJ Mood\u003c\/em\u003e | Vinyl LP — 1986 Japanese CBS\/Sony (28AP 3243)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe first quintet album with Marcus Roberts on piano\u003c\/strong\u003e: Branford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland had both departed, and “J Mood” introduced the new lineup with Roberts alongside Robert Hurst on bass and Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums, a more introverted rhythm section that suited the album’s after-hours atmosphere.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eIllustrated by Romare Bearden\u003c\/strong\u003e: the sleeve art is by the American collagist whose work defined the visual language of jazz as a Black American art form; the choice of Bearden, whose jazz-themed collages were already part of permanent museum collections, signals how seriously Columbia was positioning Marsalis’s catalogue.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eLiner notes by Stanley Crouch and Japanese notes by critic Ogawa Takao\u003c\/strong\u003e: Crouch was Marsalis’s closest intellectual collaborator and the leading theorist of the neoclassical jazz movement they developed together; Ogawa Takao was among Japan’s most respected jazz critics and a key figure in introducing Marsalis’s work to the Japanese market.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“J Mood” arrived in 1986 as Wynton Marsalis’s fourth jazz album for Columbia, and the personnel change it documents is as significant as any of its musical contents. Branford Marsalis had left the group and Kenny Kirkland had followed. Marcus Roberts, nicknamed “J Master” on the sleeve, was twenty-two years old and a student at Florida State University when Marsalis discovered him. He would remain in the quintet for nearly a decade. Robert Hurst came in on bass, bringing a different grounding to the rhythm section than Fambrough had: less propulsive, more spacious, suited to the late-night introspective tone that runs through the album’s seven original Marsalis compositions. “J Mood” is not the group’s most celebrated record: “Black Codes (From the Underground)” (1985) and “Marsalis Standard Time Vol. 1” (1987) draw more consistent collector attention. But it is the document of the quintet’s second phase beginning, and it received the Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist in 1987. Produced by Steve Epstein at CBS studios in New York, mastered by Vlado Meller, this is the 1986 Japanese CBS\/Sony pressing manufactured by CBS\/Sony Inc. in Japan.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CBS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44578580725819,"sku":null,"price":30.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/3203\/3339\/files\/IMG_9174.jpg?v=1792208470"}],"url":"https:\/\/lushliferecords.com.au\/collections\/wynton-marsalis.oembed","provider":"Lush Life Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}