Jazz At Lincoln Center Concerts To Feature Contemporary Masterpieces

This weekend Jazz at Lincoln Center will twice present a concert of contemporary jazz masterpieces.

Featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, with co-music direction by Marsalis and Steven Feifke, the concerts, on April 25 and 26, will take “listeners on a thrilling ride through works composed and orchestrated by composers and big band leaders of today, including Miho Hazama, Darcy James Argue, Helen Sung and Jihye Lee. This concert will also feature newly commissioned works by George DeLancey, Leo Steinriede and Feifke, works that reflect the depth and breadth of the big band tradition,” JALC said.

The April 25 concert will also be available at JazzLive.com.

Discussing his new composition, The Same River, with Forbes.com, Feifke—who in 2023 won a Grammy for best large jazz ensemble album, becoming the youngest-ever bandleader to win in this category—said “the title for my piece, and the music behind it, is inspired by a quote from Heraclitus that roughly translates to, ‘A man can never step in the same river twice. For he is not the same man, and the river is not the same river.’ There’s a certain cyclical nature to life, I think, and it can be difficult at times to know where one is in that circle, or even to recognize that the circle is a circle. Everything changes, and yet…does it, really? I wanted to write a piece of music that captures that sense of lost and found––and lost then found again––feeling.”

Describing his own experience with traditional big band music, Feifke noted that his first big band album was “The Atomic Mr. Basie by The Count Basie Orchestra, featuring music by Neal Hefti. I was in middle school when my piano teacher at the time got it for me, and I’ve been hooked on the sound of the big band ever since. Ironically enough, the next large ensemble album I got into was Wide Angles by Michael Brecker, featuring arrangements and orchestrations by Gil Goldstein. Gil actually became a very close mentor to me several years later, which would have blown middle school Steven’s mind had he known that might happen several years later…

“Some of my other favorite big band performers/composers are Thad Jones, Bob Brookmeyer, Frank Foster, Quincy Jones, but that doesn’t even really scratch the surface. There was a two-year period from 2016-18 or so when all I listened to was Duke Ellington. I didn’t set out to do that, I just heard one album, got hungry for the next, then the next, and so on and so forth. One of my favorite Duke albums is Ellington Uptown. I’m also a huge fan of the arrangers and orchestrators who wrote for Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitgerald, Nancy Wilson and so many more of the great vocalists. Artists like Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, Benny Carter, Oliver Nelson, Billy May and Marty Paiche (also) come to mind.”

At 6;30 p.m. ET before each concert, JALC will offer a pre-concert discussion, led by one its distinguished scholars, who will offer deeper insight into the performance to come. Seating is based on a first-come, first-served basis, in the Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio at Frederick P. Rose Hall.