On January 15, 2021, on the occasion of a new year and the 2021 U.S. presidential inauguration, Wynton Marsalis will release The Democracy! Suite, the follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer’s provocative work, The Ever Fonky Lowdown, which was released in 2020. The Democracy! Suite will be available globally as a digital album on Blue Engine Records. Composed by Marsalis as a response to the political, social, and economic struggles facing our nation, The Democracy! Suite is a swinging instrumental rumination on both the issues that have recently dominated our lives, as well as the beauty that could emerge from a collective effort to create a better future.
The recording features members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, a hand-picked septet, with Marsalis as music director and on trumptet. Ted Nash plays alto and soprano saxophones, and flute; Walter Blanding is on tenor and soprano saxophones, and clarinet; Elliot Mason plays trombone; Dan Nimmer is the pianist, with Carlos Henriquez on bass and Obed Calvaire playing drums and tambourine. The Democracy! Suite was recorded in The Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall as a concert film.
“Jazz music is the perfect metaphor for democracy. The question that confronts us right now as a nation is, ‘Do we want to find a better way?'” Marsalis says.
Marsalis’ exploration of socio-cultural and political issues extends back. to 1985 with the GRAMMYⓇ Award-winning Black Codes (From the Underground); Blood on the Fields, the first jazz composition ever to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1996; All Rise in 2002; and 2007’s From the Plantation to the Penitentiary. In 2020, Blue Engine Records released The Ever Fonky Lowdown, Marsalis composition to directly address the cocktail of deception, racism, greed, and gullibility that subverts the global fight for human rights and corrupts the possibilities and promise of democracy in America and around the world.
For more information, visit www.jazz.org
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