Branford Marsalis News

Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, a Dream Come True

Publication: The Washington Informer
Date: September 8, 2011

On August 25, as the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approached, one of the most positive responses to the catastrophe that devastated New Orleans was unveiled – The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music. Located at 1901 Bartholomew Street in the heart of the Musicians’ Village in the Upper Ninth Ward, and named for one of the city’s most influential pianists, educators and living legends, the Center will serve as a state of the art facility for the preservation and ongoing development of New Orleans music and culture.

Like Musicians’ Village, the innovative New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity project that has provided 72 single-family homes and 10 elder-friendly duplex units for the city’s displaced musicians, the Ellis Marsalis Center was the brainchild of one of Ellis’s sons, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, and one of his most celebrated pupils, singer/pianist/actor Harry Connick, Jr. “Jazz is a tremendous part of the city’s tradition,” Connick explains, “and after the storm we had to do more than just hope that the tradition would continue.” Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on September 8th, 2011 — 02:27pm

Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo - Songs of Mirth and Melancholy (Marsalis Music, 2011)

Publication: Music and More
Author: Tim Niland
Date: September 7, 2011

Tenor and soprano saxophonist Branford Marsalis pares back to a saxophone and piano duet format, joined by longtime colleague Joey Calderazzo for a subtle ballad oriented program. Slow themes abound, but on the two pieces where Marsalis switches to tenor saxophone, the opener “One Way” and “Endymion” his unique muscularity on the bigger horn comes through. Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on September 8th, 2011 — 10:40am

Fall jazz: Branford Marsalis, SFJAZZ, Monterey Jazz Fest highlight stellar season

Publication: Mercury News
Author: Richard Scheinin
Date: August 24, 2011

Branford Marsalis: The great saxophonist’s quartet has my vote as the cockiest, and maybe the best, working band in jazz. It pours through Coltrane burnouts, hard swing, elegiac ballads (a la Keith Jarrett in the ’70s) or takes you back to jazz’s early days with W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.” Every time it takes the stage, some kind of gleeful workout is bound to happen, some sort of display of macho virtuosity that turns into spiritual exploration. Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on September 7th, 2011 — 02:21pm

Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, a dream come true

Publication: Louisiana Weekly
Author: Geraldine Wyckoff
Date: August 29, 2011

Big Chief Little Charles Taylor of the White Cloud Hunters Indian gang and Joe Jenkins, who played percussion alongside Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., quietly sat on the front porch of Jenkins’ house in the Musicians’ Village. The two Mardi Gras Indian veterans watched as a flock of media armed with notepads and cameras scurried around the newly completed Ellis Marsalis Center for Music just across the street. Inside, internationally renowned jazz superstars saxophonist Branford Marsalis and pianist/singer Harry Connick Jr. were holding court, talking about the Center that their mutual visions, determination and much work helped create.

That it is altogether possible that one day the two Musicians’ Village residents could share their sewing, singing, and tambourine skills with young people in a multi-million dollar facility almost seems incongruous. Equally unlikely is that this Center, complete with a state-of-the-art, acoustically superior performance and recording hall, sits in the Upper Ninth Ward. Not that long ago, the coming together of such disparate entities would have been deemed, well, at least improbable. Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on September 1st, 2011 — 03:12pm

Branford Marsalis: "Can We Really Use the Word 'Important' for Something That the Majority of the People Have Never Heard?"

Publication: Seattle Weekly Blogs
Author: Chris Kornelis
Date: August 30, 2011

Earlier today I had a long chat with saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who just released, with the piano player Joey Calderazzo, Songs of Mirth and Melancholy—an album of instrumentals played with a warmth and melody usually the domain of vocalists. But Marsalis was much more interested in discussing general ideas related to jazz and pop music than he was pitching his new record (though he certainly thinks very highly of it).

Many of Marsalis’ comments directed at the jazz community could just as easily be applied to the insular “world inside a world” you can find inside the indie rockosphere, to say nothing of punk, pop, and hip-hop. He’s got a point: If the most important music being made today isn’t reaching an audience, is it really important?

Here’s an excerpt from our chat:

Marsalis: I have a lot of normal friends. ‘Cause it’s important. [New York is] a weird city where actors date actors, lawyers date lawyers, musicians date musicians, it’s real strange that way. You have a bunch of musicians talking about music and they talk about what’s good and what’s not good, and they don’t consider the larger context of it, and the larger context of it is that, you know . . . Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on August 31st, 2011 — 05:26pm