Call him the hardest working man in jazz.
Nearing the end of a two-month world tour with his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, trumpeter-bandleader Wynton Marsalis and his ensemble stopped off in Manhattan last week to play the world premiere of a sprawling, 50-minute piece.
Considering that Marsalis and a smaller group of musicians next month will unveil another new work, “The Fiddler’s Tale” — loosely based on Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” — the man clearly does not waste a New York minute.
Not surprisingly, tickets for the performance of Marsalis’ latest orchestral work, “Big Train,” had been snapped up weeks earlier, with New Yorkers queueing up outside Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall hoping to buy turned-back tickets.
“We just spent the last 24 hours flying here from Portugal,” Marsalis told the crowd, though the tuxedoed musicians looked none the worse for wear.
More important, they sounded splendid throughout “The Marsalis File,” an evening devoted to the music of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s artistic director. As New York Times critic Peter Watrous noted in his review, the players “were completely at ease moving through difficult music.”
Though Marsalis didn’t say so explicitly, his “Big Train” clearly draws inspiration from Duke Ellington’s “train pieces,” such as “Happy Go Lucky Local.” In the best music of this genre, of course, the piece does much more than imitate the sound of a train — it conveys the majesty of a great journey.
Marsalis’ “Big Train” does no less. The work opens with drummer Herlin Riley uttering a vocal chant, as if beginning a story. In short order, the rest of the musicians pick up their instruments and join in, the exultant reed and brass choirs and driving jazz rhythms indeed suggesting the motion of a magnificent locomotive.
But there’s a subtext at work here, and you can detect it by listening closely.
The blues harmonies, soulful melodies and languid rhythms that define the first portions of “Big Train” evoke the South, where jazz first emerged. Listen to Marsalis’ blues laments on trumpet, and the lush orchestral colors that support it, and you’re hearing a music invented at the dawn of the 20th Century.
As the piece progresses, however, the music becomes more rhythmically aggressive, the harmonies more modern and astringent, the melody lines sleek and streamlined. The progress of Marsalis’ “Big Train,” in other words, reflects the journey of jazz itself, from the rural South to the urban North. In that way, perhaps “Big Train” also alludes to the Great Migration, in which African-Americans ventured from the South to cities such as Chicago and New York, mostly by rail.
The Times, which ran the only review of the work to date, called “Big Train” “a curious failure” that ran on too long. Though there’s no doubt that the piece would benefit if Marsalis allowed his players fewer solos, the ensemble sections (which form the bulk of the work) are first-rate.
“Big Train,” in other words, is not designed to entertain listeners with quick and flashy gestures. Rather, it’s a work of art that communicates in deeper and more subtle ways.
