{"id":23955,"date":"2011-12-08T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2011-12-08T13:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=23955"},"modified":"2011-12-09T12:04:18","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T17:04:18","slug":"branford-marsalis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/08\/branford-marsalis\/","title":{"rendered":"Branford Marsalis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s sixty-two degrees and raining in downtown Durham, North Carolina, on a Tuesday in mid-October. At noon members of the Branford Marsalis Quartet<\/a> gather at the former St. Joseph\u2019s African Methodist Episcopal church, built in 1891, now converted into the Hayti Heritage Center<\/a>, an arts-and-community nonprofit. Their goal is to record a new album over the next few days.<\/p>\n

When Marsalis moved his family to Durham from New York a decade ago, the local press assumed he was replacing the retiring director of Duke\u2019s jazz department, saxophonist Paul Jeffrey. But Marsalis, who’d grown up in Louisiana, simply wanted to return to the South and picked Raleigh-Durham because the area had an airport large enough to get him anywhere he needed to go. Later, he began teaching part-time in the noted jazz program at the historically black North Carolina Central University, which is a mile down the road from Hayti.<\/p>\n

The original St. Joseph\u2019s sanctuary remains intact: a wood-plank stage, hardwood pews, a balcony, chandeliers, and lots of stained glass. Marsalis began recording albums here in 2006 when he noticed that the room had a unique quality: there is no reverb at low decibel levels; it grows gradually with the sound.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

His road manager, Roderick Ward, and sound engineer, Rob Hunter\u2014who have been with Marsalis for twenty-seven and twenty-two years, respectively\u2014spent two days creating a recording studio on the sanctuary\u2019s stage and in adjoining rooms, hauling in seventy crates of equipment and cables and renting a Steinway grand from Hopper Piano and Organ in Raleigh. It\u2019s the sixth time they\u2019ve transformed this space. The advantage of working in Hayti, says Hunter, is that \u201cwe can build a studio the way we want to, rather than trying to adapt to an established studio\u2019s specifications.\u201d \u201cThe disadvantage,\u201d he adds, chuckling, \u201cis that we have to build a studio.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Marsalis if he had planned any overarching themes for this recording session. \u201cMusicians who talk about their concept<\/em>\u2014that\u2019s why all their songs sound the same,\u201d he said. \u201cWe select good songs and we play them to the best of our ability. Then we move on to another song and do it again. That\u2019s our concept.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2006 recording, Braggtown<\/a><\/em>, named for a Durham neighborhood, indicates the extremes this band can achieve using that method. It opens with a pulverizing twelve-minute Coltrane eruption that Marsalis calls \u201cJack Baker\u201d (Baker was a black porn star known for masturbating in the background of a film\u2019s principle action). It\u2019s followed by \u201cHope,\u201d a plaintive tune by pianist Joey Calderazzo that builds to an ecstatic lyrical rapture, and then \u201cFate,\u201d a reflective, crying ballad written by Marsalis and inspired by Wagner. \u201cMy music has become a collage of history,\u201d Calderazzo told me. \u201cI\u2019m not a classical pianist but I have a deep love for some of the romantic aspects of classical music\u2014Messiaen, Stravinsky, Ligeti. I\u2019ll try to incorporate them before I\u2019ll try to incorporate somebody like Cecil Taylor. I try to rip off everything that I can. This band encourages that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next is the jazz horror tune \u201cBlakzilla,\u201d by the band\u2019s former drummer, Jeff \u201cTain\u201d Watts. I once heard Marsalis introduce the song to an audience by saying, \u201cIf you need to go to the bathroom, you might want to go now.\u201d Then comes a stunning change of pace: \u201cO Solitude,\u201d a delicate seventeenth-century English vocal piece by Henry Purcell that Marsalis renders with a sweet, sensitive recital on soprano saxophone (reflecting his work in recent years with chamber-music ensembles and symphonies), before switching to tenor sax for a moody finish. The album closes with \u201cBlack Elk Speaks,\u201d an apocalyptic, fourteen-minute wipeout by bassist Eric Revis that sounds like a cross between late Coltrane and Messiaen\u2019s \u201cQuartet for the End of Time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur methodology is ancient,\u201d Marsalis explains. \u201cWe study everything. Great writers do the same thing. A writer writes, a writer also studies writing. Shakespeare read Plutarch. Your ability to communicate ideas grows the more you study and absorb other elements. You learn how to approach things in new and different ways. You have more elements in your repertoire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Branford on soprano sax.<\/p><\/div>\n

If Braggtown<\/em> were a novel it might be something like David Mitchell\u2019s Cloud Atlas<\/a><\/em>, a sequence of seemingly unrelated pieces that unfolds into a unified force. The music\u2014from tender to violent, from seventeenth-century England to Jim Crow America to multicultural chaos\u2014is held together by the musicians\u2019 collective voice. But when I explained to Marsalis the novelistic coherence I hear in the album\u2019s sequences, <\/em>he says it\u2019s unintentional. \u201cThere\u2019s freedom in knowing your record isn\u2019t going to sell,\u201d he reasons. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to worry about it. You might as well play the best music you can play and forget about everything else. I like working that way. That\u2019s what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marsalis admits it wasn\u2019t until 1999, when he was almost forty, that he finally dedicated himself to his craft. Before that, living in Los Angeles and New York, working with Sting, playing on The Tonight Show<\/em>, running his own band, and making numerous celebrity appearances with bands like the Grateful Dead, he relied on natural talent and a background in R&B, rock, and funk. He learned how to get by; he had a lot of fun. But as he approached middle age he decided that wasn\u2019t good enough. When he left New York for Durham, it was a self-punishing trip to the woodshed. That his woodshed sits on a Tom Fazio golf course didn\u2019t hurt. Ten years later, it\u2019s clear he made the right move: his band is peaking, and his handicap is approaching single digits.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the fall of 2006, I followed this quartet on the road for two weeks, including fourteen sets at the Jazz Standard<\/a>. Marsalis operates in a strange obscurity. His band is among the best, most diverse, and most challenging in the world, but his fame attracts a live audience that often appreciates his celebrity over his music. During a Tuesday night set, I witnessed a dramatic collision between the two elements. The quartet walked onstage and launched into a wild, ecstatic, fifteen-minute version of \u201cJack Baker.\u201d The audience was knocked back; they weren\u2019t prepared. They came for The Tonight Show <\/em>and they got The Shining.<\/em><\/p>\n

After the set I approached Marsalis in the green room: \u201cMan, the patrons were just sitting down for a glass of wine and a fine meal and you guys chopped their heads off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEat this, <\/em>motherfuckerrrrs!\u201d he growled.<\/p>\n

Not long after, I gave my niece, then in her early twenties, a copy of Braggtown. <\/em>Her favorite bands at the time were Mars Volta and Radiohead. She later e-mailed me: \u201cI had no idea jazz was this exciting.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The quartet noodles on the stage of the Hayti sanctuary, with six or so people in the hall. Finally, Marsalis says, \u201cAll right, let\u2019s do it.\u201d It\u2019s take one of about forty to come before the week is over.<\/p>\n

The first piece they record is an intricate, unnamed original by Calderazzo. It\u2019s new to the band. There are false starts, start-overs, and several complete takes that are deemed inadequate. The take that satisfies them is passionate and lyrical. It\u2019s a rigorous beginning.<\/p>\n

After working through the challenge of Calderazzo\u2019s new song, the next selection is familiar: Thelonious Monk\u2019s \u201cTeo,\u201d which the band has featured in recent gigs. The first take is electrifying, and it bears Monk\u2019s trademark hard, swinging rhythm, something often missing in contemporary covers. Marsalis sounds like Sonny Rollins; the band follows.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I ask twenty-year-old wunderkind drummer Justin Faulkner what artists Marsalis has made him listen to during his two and a half years with the quartet. \u201cAhmad Jamal,\u201d he says. \u201cAt first I thought it sounded corny. But as I kept listening, [Jamal\u2019s drummer] Vernell Fournier changed my life. Branford also made me listen to Jo Jones\u2019s solo record, and I love it. Beyond jazz, there\u2019s all kinds of stuff Branford made me check out that most jazz students wouldn\u2019t admit to listening to, like Led Zeppelin and the old hip-hop artist Dr. Octagon. I\u2019ve learned to listen to everything and take it all seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Day two begins with a composition by Revis. It has a quirky melody and powerful rhythm and sounds like something Andrew Hill might compose, a Monk-like blend of blues and hopscotch fun. The band is struggling with it. \u201cI can\u2019t tell what y\u2019all are playing,\u201d Marsalis says. And at another point: \u201cThe shit ain\u2019t easy. The good shit never is. But we want to make it appear easy, and we aren\u2019t doing that right now.\u201d After another couple of unsuccessful takes, he says, \u201cIt\u2019s not happening. There\u2019s an energy to this tune that we don\u2019t have right now. Let\u2019s move on. We\u2019ll revisit this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Revis tells me later, \u201cBranford has always had the most composure of anyone I\u2019ve ever experienced in the recording studio. After all these years, it has rubbed off on the band.\u201d Calderazzo echoes Revis: \u201cBranford\u2019s role as a band leader has become a situation where he trusts us to do what we do, and he lets us go. The message is that it\u2019s about playing music freely\u2014let\u2019s play our asses off.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Sam Stephenson is the author of <\/em>The Jazz Loft Project. He is currently at work on a biography of W. Eugene Smith for Farrar, Straus and Giroux. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

All photographs by Frank Hunter.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s sixty-two degrees and raining in downtown Durham, North Carolina, on a Tuesday in mid-October. At noon members of the Branford Marsalis Quartet gather at the former St. Joseph\u2019s African Methodist Episcopal church, built in 1891, now converted into the Hayti Heritage Center, an arts-and-community nonprofit. Their goal is to record a new album over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1187],"tags":[5113,5116,5117,5118,330,5114,1750,46,173,1003,1718,3878,5115,1747,2201],"class_list":["post-23955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-music","tag-branford-marsalis","tag-cecil-taylor","tag-cloud-atlas","tag-david-mitchell","tag-jazz","tag-joey-calderazzo","tag-john-coltrane","tag-music","tag-north-carolina","tag-radiohead","tag-records","tag-sonny-rollins","tag-stravinsky","tag-thelonious-monk","tag-wilhelm-richard-wagner"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBranford Marsalis by Sam Stephenson<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"December 8, 2011 \u2013 It\u2019s sixty-two degrees and raining in downtown Durham, North Carolina, on a Tuesday in mid-October. 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