StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra celebrates the greats

As part of StLJN's continuing quest to bring you some sort of jazz-related content here each week (without being able to rely on this feature's primary raison d'etre of previewing upcoming shows in St. Louis), today let's take a look in the video vault of Jazz at Lincoln Center, the New York City-based presenter and producing organization headed by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

The organization's Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, formed 32 years ago and still directed by Marsalis, takes on as one part of its artistic mission the role of a repertory group, performing new and classic arrangements of music by some of the most important innovators in jazz.

This post includes a half-dozen examples of the JaLCO's celebrations of jazz greats, starting up above with their tribute to the music of Miles Davis, recorded in November 2018 at the Rose Theater in the JaLC HQ in New York.

Along with Marsalis conducting and playing trumpet, the band at this juncture included longtime members such as saxophonists Sherman Irby, Ted Nash and Victor Goines, trumpeters Ryan Kisor, Kenny Rampton, and Marcus Printup, and trombonist Vincent Gardner, plus rising star Camille Thurman on tenor sax, with the lineup rounded out by more top NYC players.

Most of those same musicians also were part of the ensemble for the first video after the jump, which documents the orchestra's tribute to pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, as performed in October 2018 at the Rose Theater.

Next, you can see a recording of a program called "Celebrating Ella: The First Lady of Jazz," recorded in April 2017 and featuring guest vocalists Kenny Washington and Roberta Gambarini plus tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano.

Given Marsalis' known musical conservatism, things take a somewhat unexpected turn in the next video, as JaLCO ofers big band arrangements of the music of Ornette Coleman, recorded in May 2018.

The orchestra is back on more familiar ground in the fifth video, which documents their tribute to the music of Dizzy Gillespie in January 2017.

Last but not least, JaLCO takes on a different kind of challenge in the form of the odd meters of the music of pianist and composer Dave Brubeck, in a program recorded back in April 2014 at Rose Theater.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...