Stephen_Murray's Full Review: Sweet Release & Ghost Story by Wynton Marsalis
The opening slide upward in Wynton Marsalis "Sweet Release" registers in my brain as an echo of the opening of "Rhapsody in Blue." The rest of the piece is more Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus than Gershwin. In addition to being a great trumpeter and a resourceful composer, Wynton Marsalis is knowledgeable about the history of jazz, and reaches back to the wailings of King Oliver. Much more of the history of jazz than what I know and recognize seems amalgamated into the edgy ballet written for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.
"Sweet Release" swings, though the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra doesn't sound like a big band (or Big Band). The composer's trumpet playing does not monopolized the proceedings (in the manner of, say, Miles Davis).
Like Ellington's concert music, "Sweet Release" is entirely written out, including what sounds like improvisations. Some of it does not sound very danceable to me (the changing tempi in "Church," for instance), but, unfortunately, I have not seen the ballet.
It seems pointless to try to improve upon or even paraphrase Marsalis's own description of the eclectic and often raucous 34-minute ballet, so I'll quote it:
"This music moves on the outline that Judith Jamison [the Ailey troupe director] gave me for the piece, which was the development of a relationship between a man and a woman. It starts in the morning. I chose to open with the trumpet, using a vocabulary that evolved in New Orleans, which I use to represent the woman waking up, yawning and stretching. We are also exposed to the triangle of her personality. She is vulnerable, coquettish and, if necessary, willing to straighten you, correct you, verbally or physically.
The man is introduced by the trombone of Wycliffe ('Pine Cone,' 'Chuck Wagon') Gordon. He was chosen because he is a master at playing different vocal effects on his horn and because he has tremendous power. None of this obviates his musical ability to execute equally subtle things with the same degree of emotional nuance. The character he portrays is strong, smooth as wet ice, but he also questions himself. He’s not always sure he has it together.
The design of the music renders the interaction between these two male and female personalities. There are a lot of changes in the ground rhythm. This supplies different things that dancers can react to, one way or another. The first movement introduces us to the woman. The second introduces us to the man.
The third, which alternates between two meters, 5/4 and 6/4 and moves on top of a vamp, is about when the man and the woman go to a ritualized wedding, set in the past and in the future, which is why the snake of the clarinet, which means no good to anyone, is appropriate. Wrong and evil step through all doors of time, backwards and forwards.
You have got to watch out for that snake. He’s never satisfied. He’s looking for Adam and he’s looking for Eve. He won’t settle for one. He wants to break the whole groove up. That’s why this section ends with the snake by himself.
The salsa section is about big, big groups of men and women. I turned around the usual sound-image and made the saxophones the men and the brass the women. This is colorful and it uses the full ensemble to celebrate the feeling of a party, with the sensuality that has been elevated to such a high level in Latin dance…What I wanted to get here is the joy and the exuberance that we always feel when we see or do this kind of dancing. The end of this part, which slows down, represents the glowing exhaustion at the end of a great party, where a fine time was surely had by all.
The three of them emerge from this good time with their conflicts still intact. This is the blues in which two people are roped together by a snake. it starts with the clarinet in the bottom, working his way up and bringing hell with him, intent on getting between the two people. Here, in musical terms, we have a reiteration of the traditional New Orleans front line of trumpet, trombone, and clarinet. A series of battles ensues. First the clarinet fights with the man, who is trying to protect the woman. Then the woman comes out in all of her heated grandeur but, like the man, she doesn’t really repel the clarinet. Then the trumpet and the trombone get together and blow the clarinet out. The clarinet, relegated to the lower position, that is, the lower realm of hell, fades away, unhappy because his destructive intentions have been stymied.
The final section is the culmination, the victory of romance over distraction. It has the particular sound we hear because there is no greater joy than the joy felt by a man and woman who have overcome the snakes of disorder, the things that might separate them. When those personalities see each other so clearly that they can no longer forget what attracted them to one another, they move with pure confidence into very, very close circumstances, which can only be expressed increasingly close swing."
I will note that it is unusual for the trumpet to be the/a woman -- especially in a piece written by a trumpeter.
Ghost Story was written for a small ensemble -- Ted Nash on reeds, Eric Lewis on piano, Carlito Henriquez or Rodney Whitaker on bass, and Jaz Sawyer on drums -- choreographed by Li Zhong Mei (for the Zhongmei Dance troupe).
Chinese ghost stories often include seductive ghosts rather than frightening ones. The Marsalis/Li one portrays a beautiful woman seemingly brought back to life by music and love -- though this is an illusion. "The woman, sensuous and possessed of magical powers," Marsalis explained, "changes identifies and forms, from human to ghost, in the guise of a fox spirit, and back again. This mysterious story is about deception and thwarted love, a kind of failed collaboration, between figures of different realms, the world of the earth and that of the spirits, of dream and reality, hope and disillusionment."
Jazz critic Stanley Crouch wrote that Marsalis's music for "Ghost Story" "spreads over an expressive spectrum: from what initially seems like no more than a listless set of scalar exercises to a steamy tango, moving from place to place in ways we have not heard from him before. It is an achievement that hasn’t one aural tinge of the counterfeit."
Well, perhaps Crouch's ears can distinguish "illusory" from "counterfeit." The introduction sounds to me to derive from somewhere between Ravel and Poulenc, not from the aural world of Thelonius Monk or Duke Ellington. This definitely changes with the insinuating tango played by Ted Nash. And the "First Blues" -- although written for piano and at times reminiscent of Debussy and Ravel, brings Gary Burton to my mind (before the yearning saxophone joins the piano). The saxophone has the wailing lead to "Second Blues," though sounding "cool."
"Celebration" sounds like Woody Herman and his Thundering Herd (
The piano in the finale sounds languorously wistful (somewhere between Poulenc and cocktail lounge piano.
All of "Ghost Story" seems danceable to me, though I'm sure that Jamison managed to choreograph "Sweet Release" spectacularly. Crouch passionately believes that "Sweet Release" is a masterpiece. I prefer the quieter "Ghost Story," but both ballets are compositions by a master -- a master composer of concert jazz, a master of classical trumpet, a master of jazz trumpet, and someone able to draw on the whole history of jazz and of western music reaching at least back to the baroque epoch.
Tracks and Timings
Sweet Release
Home: Beyond This Rage 7:51
Church: Renewing Vows 7:19
Church Basement: Party 5:28
Street: Make Room For Me 4:24
Home: Give Me Your Hand 5:47
Ghost Story
Introduction 3:07
Acknowledgment 5:30
Tango 6:21
First Blues 2:27
Awakening 2:17
Celebration 2:33
Second Blues 4:17
Recognition & Reconciliation 2:34
This review is a resumption of writing about what I found under "M" on a trip to the San Francisco Public Library for the upcoming (mid-April) National Library Week writeoff.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.