He & She
As the title to Wynton Marsalis‘s fifth Blue Note release indicates, He and She is about that eternally compelling and most elemental of subjects: the relationship between a man and a woman.
The Artistic Director of Jazz Lincoln Center,Jazz musician, trumpeter, composer, bandleader, advocate for the arts, and educator, however, hasn’t merely crafted a love story, but a life story – a bittersweet rumination about the evanescence of life as well as the elusiveness of romance. It’s an ambitious effort, combining spoken word and music, and Marsalis has given his quintet some formidable charts. The album is tempered with flashes of humor and plenty of swing. There’s ease and elegance and more than a little wisdom in these grooves.
LINER NOTES
Mediocrity and submission to adolescent trends might form the low road to commercial success, but only quality is truly liberating. If one is a musician, mediocrity darkens the notes until all timeless meaning disappears. Quality turns on all of the lights of human meaning inside of the notes until the true point of art is achieved, that timeless vitality that is beyond all styles but can be fully present in any.
They all sound like nothing less than professionals who are also inspired artists. Just what one needs for a great band. But a great band demands a great listener, so enjoy the kind of music that not only provides enjoyment but creates an elevated state in which the listener, through heart and mind, becomes another member of the band and can travel with it as far back as far back goes or as far out as far out will. Then the feeling of jazz is fully realized. Timelessness has become a normal condition.
Enjoy…