StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, part 3

This week, let's take one more trip into the video vault of NYC's Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. While the two previous posts here featuring JaLCO have emphasized their capabilities as a repertory ensemble, this week's selection of videos is more of a grab bag, with three shows offering interpretations of familiar material and and three spotlighting original works by the orchestra's members.

To get things started, the first video up above, "Lush Life: Celebrating Billy Strayhorn," was recorded in June 2016 and surveys the sometimes-underappreciated career of the composer and arranger who served as Duke Ellington's right-hand man and rehearsal pianist, and also wrote many significant pieces of music for the Ellington band, including the signature song, "Take The A Train."

After the jump, you can see "Jazz in the Key of Life," a program from January 2016 in which the orchestra presents arrangements of popular music from the 1960s to today, including songs by Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, The Beatles, Elton John, and more.

That's followed by, as the old saying goes, something completely different in the form of "Nursery Song Swing," which features JaLCO's original arrangements of various folk, traditional, and contemporary songs for children as recorded in March, 2018.

Next, it's "The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Songbook," a sampler of various original compositions and arrangements from Marsalis and other members of the orchestra, recorded in October 2017.

The fifth video, titled "Spiritual Sounds & The Jazz Age," features extended works from two longtime JaLCO members, saxophonist/clarinetist Victor Goines and trombonist Chris Crenshaw. Both Goines' "Untamed Elegance" and Crenshaw’s "God’s Trombones" were recorded as part of the same program in January of this year.

The final video, which documents Marsalis' original suite "The Abyssinian Mass," was recorded in November 2019 and featuring the Chorale Le Chateau along with the orchestra.

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