Wynton Marsalis Septet

Jazz at Lincoln Center held a Jack Johnson Festival -- essentially a preview Ken Burns’ upcoming historical documentary film “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.” (January 17th and 18th 2005 on PBS) *. Wynton Marsalis wrote and/or arranged the movie’s score, so clips from the film were interspersed with commentary by the filmmaker and live performances of the music in those clips by the Wynton Marsalis Septet (which became an octet and then a nonet, but who's counting? The man has lots of talented friends.)

Okay: so it was really a multi-media excuse to get people into the new Jazz at Lincoln Center' Frederick P. Rose Hall and Rose Theatre, thereby developing/increasing the audience base. Fine. I'd say it worked. I will watch the PBS series and, better still, I will buy the CD of the music. I might even go to a jazz performance or two. I can’t say that I’m now diving headfirst into jazz enthusiasm, but I knew that I was in the presence of greatness; I didn’t have to critique it or consider whether and why I enjoyed it, or compare it to any other jazz performance I had seen. I indulged in the luxury of just sitting there and letting myself be blown away. It was all tremendous and new.

And within walking distance of my own home.

And free.

Free? Well, yes. A friend had a block of tickets from the Robin Hood Foundation [Yeah, I’m plugging them: they throw the big charitable functions where people look like they might actually be having fun] and so when she asked, “Would you like to go?” I replied with the pitifully obvious, “Why yes, thank you!” So I think this experience ranks up there with going to some play they were doing on FDR Drive circa 1970 and realizing later I had seen Raul Julia or somebody like that doing The Merchant of Venice with the fledgling New York Shakespeare Festival with that up-and-coming director, Joseph Papp; or when the word went around among the balletomanes that an injury-forced substitution at a Joffrey performance of Ashton’s The Dream at the old, un-improved City Center meant that one only had to pay $1 to see Antony Dowell in a role that was created on him.

Hmm. Such is the culture of The City of New York, I think. Just seein’ stuff—la-dee-dah!—around the neighborhood.

*Jack Johnson was the guy that James Earl Jones played in The Great White Hope on Broadway thirty-odd years ago, and this is his story. There's no point in me trying to describe the film any further than that. See it yourself. Just stay home two nights in the middle of the cold, bleak winter and watch TV.