>>PREVIEW
ELLIS MARSALIS
Friday, March 24
Jack Singer
Veteran jazzman Ellis Marsalis is arguably one of the finest pianists alive today, but as he’s quick to point out, there’s no magic to his achievements. As father to acclaimed musicians Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Ellis is also the first to demythologize the reputations of his sons and himself. The answer is simple – hard work.
Now, many of you are saying, "Aren’t musicians like the Marsalises examples of genius in the music industry?" According to Ellis, definitely not. Marsalis sees it as a serious question, but he also laughs when talking about genius in any field.
"You know," says Ellis, "the whole idea of genius is one of those things that people sometimes spread gratuitously…. I’m not always complicitous with that much generosity, and you know a lot of times we have to wait. When Charlie Parker was developing his music he was just considered a doped-out drug addict, and it’s years later and some people still don’t really understand the genius of what he did and what it shaped. It actually turned some music in a different direction, which to me is a manifestation of true genius."
What Marsalis does credit is lots of hard work, a willingness to learn and to push himself further. For him it began with the two greatest influences in his career – Oscar Peterson and Parker.
"Oscar was one of the first pianists that I heard that really just sort of blew me away," says Marsalis. "This was when I was in high school and a friend of mine had a recording – they were 78s in those days, and it was Oscar Peterson playing ‘Tenderly.’ When I heard that I said, ‘Man, who in the world is that!’ Maybe a year later maybe two years, Jazz at the Philharmonic came to New Orleans and Oscar was on the tour… I went to the concert and further entrenched myself in Oscar. The more serious I got about the piano, the more I got into Oscar."
From that point on, Marsalis used Peterson’s recordings as a yardstick for his own musical progress. This was key to Marsalis aiming higher in his career, but it’s something he observes is not so easily done by today’s young musicians. There is one major difference between access to major talents of that time and today, says Marsalis – television.
"In the world that we live in today that is highly, highly competitive," says Ellis, "music suffers a lot, primarily because lots of people who are in positions of authority at institutions where music is being taught formally do not fully comprehend the extent to which television has affected the pool of players and singers."
Marsalis is quick to point out that his complaint is not with television itself – TV is merely the medium, not the cause. "If I have a problem, it’s usually with the fact that there are too many young kids who do not get the opportunity to really get the information beyond the level of mediocrity," he says. "Their models have become people who function at the highest level of mediocrity so that’s my biggest gripe is with those people who are supposed to be teaching students and they don’t really give them the benefit of an education."
Television’s influence notwithstanding, it’s fortunate that we can still point to role models who reflect excellence. For young jazz musicians, several of those role models have the surname Marsalis. In the end, the best advice based on Ellis’s career is to aim higher and work harder. |
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