Date/Time
Date(s) - 12/04/2014
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Location
Joe Henderson Lab, SFJAZZ Center
Category(ies)
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Concert sets at 7pm and 8:30pm
“His (Marsalis) playing is eccentric within graceful boundaries, concerned with polyrhythm as science, history and gamesmanship, full of technique used to non-slick ends…Discipline and strategy are written deeply into the band.” — The New York Times
“Those who value serious musicianship, sensitive phrasemaking and thoroughly idiomatic performances of a broad span of repertoire will find this (group) deeply satisfying.” — Chicago Tribune
- Jason Marsalis — vibraphone
- Austin Johnson — piano
- Will Goble — bass
- Dave Potter — drums
Jason Marsalis is the youngest member of the illustrious Marsalis clan, but his accomplishments would make fitting laurels for an octogenarian. A drummer who established his career on the red-hot New Orleans jazz scene, he spent more than a decade in the Marcus Roberts Trio, one of jazz’s most accomplished and stylistically encompassing ensembles, and co-founded the Afro-Caribbean jazz combo Los Hombres Calientes with percussionist Bill Summers and trumpeter Irvin Mayfield. He is a savvy producer and prolific composer as well, performing internationally with conductor Seiji Ozawa for interpretations of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and “Concerto in F.” In recent years he’s concentrated on the vibraphone, launching the beautifully calibrated quartet featured on his recent album A World of Mallets (and at this concert). Exploring a vast range of material, including compositions by Bobby Hutcherson and Hermeto Pascoal, the quartet focuses on Marsalis’s finely wrought originals, which often employ tricky time signatures and intricately lapidary textures. While the quartet plays with the dynamic control and precision of a chamber ensemble, the band’s bluesy authority and improvisational firepower leave no doubt why Marsalis was named an NEA Jazz Master along with his father Ellis and his brothers Branford, Wynton, and Delfeayo.