Concert review: Wynton Marsalis reshapes the jazz image at Winspear Opera House

He threw in a few blues pieces, too.

Brandon Wade

Wynton Marsalis, top left, and The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra perform at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, Tuesday, February 5, 2013.

DALLAS — Wynton Marsalis has taken flak over the years for treating jazz like an art object in a museum. But he definitely took off the white cotton gloves and pushed the music into new ground Tuesday night at the Winspear Opera House.

Leading his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on its 25th anniversary tour, the trumpeter ran the gamut from cool jazz to the avant-garde with a surprise side trip into Chicago blues. After intermission, he teamed with Dallas singer-guitarist Lucky Peterson – “the living embodiment of the blues,” Marsalis called him – for a chilling version of Jimmy Rogers’ Korean War-era “The World Is In a Tangle.”

Like most jazz purists, Marsalis rarely plays blues songs, lest he sully jazz’s uptown image. But the tune showed jazz and blues are branches on the same tree as Marsalis played a haunting trumpet solo that fit perfectly with Peterson’s soulful electric guitar work.

When Peterson left, Marsalis got even bolder with parts of “Abyssinian 200,” the jazz-gospel Mass he wrote in 2008 to honor the Abyssinian Baptist Church. It’s a thrilling work that swings from hairpin-turn bebop into free-form madness with the horns crying like seagulls during a feeding frenzy. Earlier, the group turned downright surreal during “Insatiable Hunger,” an ode to Dante’s Inferno written by JALCO saxophonist Sherman Irby.

Brandon Wade

Wynton Marsalis introduces The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra before their performance at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, Tuesday, February 5, 2013.

The crazy moments didn’t last long in a show made up mostly of traditional jazz. But there was an edge to almost everything the 15-man orchestra played.

The trombone section tap-danced its lips furiously through Duke Ellington’s “Braggin’ in Brass.” Trumpeter Kenny Rampton fired up Horace Silver’s “Senor Blues” with a solo that somehow managed to be brazen and subtle at the same time. And while Marsalis tried to stay out of the spotlight and blend into the band, he led the pack with a series of risky trumpet solos that focused on the music’s key element: improvisation.

“We don’t segregate. All jazz is modern jazz,” he said near the start of the show. And for the next 95 minutes, he proved it with a performance that reminded fans that jazz isn’t a dusty antique – it’s a living, breathing art form.

Thor Christensen is a Dallas freelance writer.