Word: concertized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...find Johnson on Broadway right now. But last month she and quite a few other seasoned showstoppers were in a theater two blocks from Times Square as part of the seventh annual Festival of New Musicals. Five shows, in 55-minute concert versions, were staged by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre under the deft stewardship of Joseph McConnell. The Alliance serves 83 regional theater and light-opera companies, from mammoth (the 11,059-seat St. Louis Muny) to mini (the 104-seat Village Theatre, in Issaquah, Washington), all of them searching for that vanishing species, the Broadway-style musical...
Jarrett's uncompromising career took off in the mid-1970s with his seminal solo-improvisation concerts in Europe--with 2 1/2 million copies sold, his 1975 album, The Koln Concert, is the best-selling solo-piano album ever. "Music should be thought of as the desire for an ecstatic relationship to life," explains the former disciple of the mystic philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff. "Music has to have a deep joy inside...
Although Marsalis's introduction implied an exclusively Ellington set, some of Marsalis's own compositions found their way into the concert as well. The evening started slowly with the medium-tempo Ellington tune "Blues in Blueprint," followed by Marsalis's "Back to Basics," which allowed the band to open up a bit with solos throughout each section. However, it wasn't until after they had played two selections from Ellington's Deep South Suite and "Red Garter" from Ellington's Toot Suite that the band finally began to warm up. The highpoint of the first set came with the second...
...concert's second half continued the Ellington/Marsalis theme. Obscure Ellington tunes such as "The Giddybug Gallop" and "Anitra's Dance" from the Peer Gynt Suite preceeded the most impressive moment of the evening, "Jack the Bear." Ellington's double bass feature for Jimmy Blanton was competently played by bassist Ben Wolfe. However, the cameo appearance of pianist Marcus Roberts proved to be the highlight of the tune. Roberts stretched the harmonies of his blues choruses with Monkish lines, piano runs reminiscent of Ellington's "Ko-Ko" and an unparalled rhythmic concept. Following Roberts, Marsalis introduced LCJO's vocalist Milt Grayson...
...standout was the trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, who is perhaps one of the most versatile and loudest trombonists today. Though he only rarely picked up his horn, Marsalis also distinguished himself, particularly in his trumpet duel with Marcus Belgrave and his balled performance. Those performance stood out from the concert together with the adventurous selection of seldom-heard Ellingtonia which constituted a fitting tribute to the Duke in itself...