| A giant of the trumpet? Unquestionably. Jazz giant? I don't know, while he can obviously play, his music sort of leaves me cold. I WANT to like him more than I do but there seems a strange emotional reserve in his improvising that keeps me from really enjoying it, as if everything is at one level removed from the immediate. I don't know if this makes any sense. I kind of feel the quotation marks around stuff a lot of the time when I hear him. He's wonderful with kids and the public, the perfect ambassador to the world at large for jazz, but he's not my favorite jazz player by a long shot. I've had a couple conversations with him, and he's funny, warm, knowledgeable and articulate. I think he's an unsurpassed classical player, and if you remember that recording he did of cornet solos with the Eastman Wind Ensemble-yikes! As far as imagination and creativity, he's like an engineer to me, someone perfect to run the LCJO and be the CEO of Jazz, Inc. over there. Someone to hire if you ever needed a trumpet player for just about any kind of gig. But not someone who would ever be able to think of Kind of Blue or something. And I don't really feel the need to hear a recording of the LCJO do Ellington, I have Duke's recordings which suffice for me. Though I certainly wouldn't mind hearing the band live, like I don't mind hearing the Mingus band, though I don't think I own any of their records.He certainly is a key figure in the neo-classical-ification of jazz.
Michael McLaughlin
"It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Chicago MM |