★★★★★
Saxophonist Branford Marsalishas been working overtime to dispel the memories of his recentlounge-lite Leno gig. On The Dark Keys he comes out fighting, displaying aconfident and tough if overly busy style that returns him tocontender status. Working with just bass and drums, Marsalisholds his ground, even on some mano a mano encounters with acesaxmen Joe Lovano and Kenny Garrett. This is serious, demandingplaying from a celebrity itching to prove he's still an artist. A-
- ew.com
2011-03-03
★★★★★
Jazz instrumentalists must forge a compromise between the demands of the audience and the siren call of their muse. The two most famous Marsalis brothers offer an illustration of this dichotomy as they pursue divergent career directions. Wynton, ever the public figure, is the idiomatic jazz icon, an urbane epitome of taste, perfect technique and post-Ellingtonian formalism...
- www.offbeat.com
2010-11-09
★★★★★
A career-positioningstatement in matter-of-fact musical terms, Bloomington declaressquarely that, The Tonight Show be damned, Branford Marsalis is nosellout. Music stores will find that this CD won't sell out either:It's insular music for the hard-bop elite, scarcely the inclusionaryjazz-pop that Marsalis has been developing for his late-night dayjob. B+
- ew.com
2010-08-27
★★★★★
Branford Marsalis is one of this music's most recognizable figures. The eldest brother of jazz's first family, he's been an honored constituent of the community since first joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1980. As a member of the Wynton Marsalis Quintet, saxophonist with Sting and director of the Tonight Show band he has been at the center of much media controversy, but it is as a leader of his own quartet that he has truly made his mark. Now he has a record company...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2010-08-20
★★★★★
Taken together these two CDs chronicle Branford Marsalis' 20-year recording career as a leader, documenting his ascent as one of the most recognized artists of his generation. There is much excellent music on both discs, but because they are so fundamentally different in temperament it is very likely that many fans who are totally enthralled with one will feel much less so about the other...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2010-08-20
★★★★★
Braggtown, named for the neighborhood in Durham, N.C., where Branford Marsalis lives, is his strongest album since 2000's Contemporary Jazz. The saxophonist has taken some detours in the past several years?covering the legends on Footsteps of Our Fathers, finding inspiration in paintings on Romare Bearden Revealed and turning to balladry on Eternal. All of those albums were fine. But here Marsalis returns to the formula in which his long-running quartet excels...
- www.jazztimes.com
2010-02-19
★★★★★
Among the more telltale signs of a shifting recording industry was the announcement, early this year, that Branford Marsalis' longstanding relationship with Columbia had come to an close-and that the saxophonist would be founding his own label, the Boston-based Marsalis Music. Now come the first fruits of independence: ironically, an album devoted to the achievements of masters past. But tradition has always been Marsalis' currency, despite varying rates of exchange...
- www.jazztimes.com
2010-02-19
★★★★★
The title might have added the parenthetical For Kenny in tribute to the late, great pianist Kenny Kirkland. His presence is key to this music-Branford's finest to date-and will be sorely missed on both musical and personal levels. Kirkland's urgent comping and well-spun right-hand lines invigorate the uptempo burners here while his empathetic playing on balladic numbers, like Marsalis' beautiful "A Thousand Autumns," speaks softly with uncommon eloquence...
- www.jazztimes.com
2010-02-19
★★★★★
Eternal is Branford Marsalis' third release on his Marsalis Music imprint, and his fourth with the working quartet of Joey Calderazzo, Eric Revis and Jeff "Tain" Watts. It is an album of evocative ballads, and thus a marked departure from the early-jazz jubilation of last year's Romare Bearden Revealed. As for repertoire, Marsalis nods to jazz classics but also continues his practice of featuring band members as composers. Watts weighs in with "Reika's Loss," a slow and heartfelt waltz...
- www.jazztimes.com
2010-02-19
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