★★★★★
Like so many other jazz musicians, Wynton Marsalis spent his formative years steeped in church music, but only sporadically has he incorporated gospel or other religion-based elements into his own work willfully. Instead, he has on occasion drawn upon his core beliefs in positivity, singularity and consciousness-raising and integrated his convictions when apropos...
- jazztimes.com
2014-01-31
★★★★★
"And the glory goes to God." The penultimate cut "To Higher Ground" arguably sums things up best on Wynton Marsalis' "spiritual" compilation, fittingly titled The Spiritual Side of Wynton Marsalis. While The Spiritual Side of Wynton Marsalis doesn't bring anything new to the virtuosic musician's arsenal, it does showcase some of the strongest performances of Marsalis' illustrious career, in which black gospel music and the church played an integral role...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-01-15
★★★★★
Wynton Marsalis has fashioned one of the more intriguing careers in jazz history. The brightest product of one of the greatest of New Orleans' fabled musical families, Marsalis became the most visible figure of a new generation of jazz musicians who emerged in the '80s under the sobriquet "The Young Lions."
It seems like a millennium ago that Marsalis released his eponymous debut album, back in the day before CDs existed. The record received near-universal acclaim...
- www.offbeat.com
2013-10-29
★★★★★
The story of Jack Johnson deserves to be accompanied by music that is majestic, bold, daring, and passionate. The boxer, whose fate has been depicted in a new film by Ken Burns, led a life that was filled with happiness, success, romance, tragedy, and misery. Wynton Marsalis' music for The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson parallels the fate of America's first Black Heavyweight Champion of the World...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2012-06-11
★★★★★
If we call an artist who averages an album per year prolific, what then to say about Wynton Marsalis' output of 1999-2000? During that period Marsalis released nine albums, each showcasing a different sector within his domain. Marsalis called the series Swinging Into the 21st, and that run of albums has now been compiled into an 11-disc box set that also includes All Rise, Marsalis' monumental 2002 orchestral/vocal project. Ambitious? Undeniably. Ego stroke? Marsalis has been accused of that...
- jazztimes.com
2012-03-19
★★★★★
I'll admit it. When I ripped open a padded envelope last week and found a copy of Wynton Marsalis' new box set Swinging into the 21st my heart sank. What could be said about Wynton Marsalis that hasn't already been said? Then I started doing some research and realized that, my god, there is a lot about Wynton Marsalis that I don't know. But not to bore you with my lack of knowledge (that's a whole other article all together), let's talk about this set...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-02-06
★★★★★
Marsalis' latest release in a lengthy career is his fifth for Blue Note and is a typically ambitious project that combines both music and the spoken word. As his starting point Marsalis takes the theme of relationships between men and women and his narrative explores the nature of these over time. He explores the rituals of courtship, partnership, gender roles and the effects of memory and the passage of time on male/female relationships, setting it all in the context of jazz history...
- www.thejazzmann.com
2010-12-20
★★★★★
Poor Wynton Marsalis is fighting a losing battle. You see, he can't seem to get over the fact that hip-hop (and several other musical genres since the '50s) has replaced jazz as the lingua franca of the African-American community. Give the musical republican points for trying, though, for there is, in fact, some worthwhile music on From the Plantation to the Penitentiary, and he's actually uncovered an interesting new talent in vocalist Jennifer Sanon...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-09
★★★★★
Given the makeup of the new Wynton Marsalis compilation, Standards and Ballads, its no surprise that the music contained therein lives up to the highest standards of its genre. Here you have one of the greatest living jazz trumpeters playing a collection of songs that have stood the test of time, many of them having existed as long as jazz itself, all accompanied by a revolving cast of first-rate musicians...
- www.offbeat.com
2010-11-02
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