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Wynton Marsalis
He And She
BLUE NOTE 50999
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Wynton Marsalis continues his exploration of spoken word, which he
began with From The Plantation To The Penitentiary, and the blues,
which he and Willie Nelson embraced on Two Men With The Blues.
Using the vernacular of Langston Hughes, but writing in a formal,
Olympian style inspired by Irish national poet William Butler Yeats,
Marsalis alternates between words and music, reciting a stanza then
dramatizing its theme with his quintet. At the end, he strings all the
stanzas together, declaiming his long poem about the trials of love in a
satisfying finale. The result is a form new to me, something that might
be called jazz art-song with the components teased apart.
A quintet plucked from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, with
the appropriately soulful Walter Blanding on reeds, renders Marsalis’
artful compositions, which range from ballads and brief tone poems to
vintage two-beat, burning bop sometimes at dazzling speed. Most of
the pieces are written in waltz time—the meter of romance—but with
a pulse of four nudging at the sidelines. This makes for some delicious
rhythmic ambiguity, especially on the halting, slow-motion honkytonk
“A Train, A Banjo, And A Chicken Wing.”
“The Razor Rim,” the most exciting cut on the album, casts an
intricately accented melody in 9, then runs through 5 and 4. The timbres
are vintage Marsalis (which is also to say vintage Ellington)—
plunger sprays and squalls; seductive, low-register tenor sax jaunts;
pert harmonies for the two; and, on “First Kiss,” a hocket for trumpet
and soprano sax. Some of the percussion parts feel composed, but
there’s no shortage of swinging and fine brush work from Ali
Jackson.
Pianist Dan Nimmer sparkles throughout, especially on the tender,
cottony “First Slow Dance,” a high point. Interest also peaks with the
bluesy, Harmon-muted reverie “The Sun And The Moon,” with a
great Blanding obbligato. Marsalis shines on the dark and driving
“The Razor Rim” and turns in some fine, shapely phrases with a snappy
grace-note motif on the aptly named “Sassy.”
The problem with this well-played, well-crafted album is that it
feels oddly detached from the intense emotions it describes. It’s as if
Marsalis, like the wise old blues man he invokes in his poem, were
looking down from on high at the follies and foibles of love rather
than actually experiencing them. That’s in keeping with his avowed
inspiration, Yeats’ “Under Ben Bulben,” which was the work of an
old man looking back on life (and even writing his own epitaph).
Marsalis is 47. His poem is wise and witty in places—and what a
voice he has, reciting it!—but the classical distance he keeps from
emotion, his stress of craft over abandon, makes this heartfelt foray
into romance and the blues all the more dissonant. If you want to play
the blues, don’t just talk about them. Play ’em. —Paul de Barros
JOANNE SAVIO
He And She: School Boy; The Sun And The Moon; Sassy; Fears; The Razor Rim; Zero; First
Crush; First Slow Dance; First Kiss; First Time; Girls!; A Train, A Banjo, And A Chicken Wing;
He And She. (75:15)
Personnel: Wynton Marsalis, trumpet; Walter Blanding, tenor and soprano saxophone, clarinet;
Dan Nimmer, piano; Carlos Henriquez, bass; Ali Jackson, drums.
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Ordering info: bluenote.com
June 2009 DOWNBEAT 57