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May 01--NORFOLK -- Wynton Marsalis spent nearly three hours on stage at Chrysler Hall Sunday night and never put a trumpet to his multi-Grammy award-winning lips.
Didn't matter. Marsalis was master of a much broader instrument: his fabled Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and a Ghanian percussion ensemble known as Odadaa!
The musicians were in town as part of a six-stop premiere tour for "Tribute to Congo Square," a work Marsalis and Yacub Addy , leader of the Ghanian group, had recently created.
Congo Square, Marsalis explained, was a legendary gathering place in old New Orleans where slaves could mingle, make African music and sell goods.
What evolved there, he said, became the basis for every genre of American music that relies on drums and bass: from Dixieland to Hip Hop, funk to rock and roll.
"You're going to keep thinking we're finished," Marsalis explained to the crowd, noting there were 14 sections to the composition. "But we aren't."
He said he would skip the introductions on each movement, since there were so many, and pointed out there would be songs for men, for women, for children: "all aspects of communal life."
What followed was an hour-long excursion through traditional African and American music. Some movements had a sultry feel, like a sweaty night along the Mississippi River. Others caught the bustle of a big city. Through it all, the African rhythms provided an irresistible underpinning to the orchestra's explorations.
One minute the band would swing as hard as Basie's. The next, they were tossing around diminished chords that would make Billy Strayhorn proud. Some movements were pretty, like a Paul Whiteman arrangement, other's as gritty as a funeral march.
It was a tour de force from both sides of the continental divide. The Ghanians, in colorful traditional garments, played off of the jazz orchestra's tight harmonies, and Marsalis' men not only survived the intricate African rhythms, they thrived on them.
The result was a composition that left you feeling as if you had stepped back in time and visited the real Congo Square, then sped forward to see how it would all turn out.
The second half of the show featured additional interactions between the two ensembles and ended with a bit of Dixieland that seemed to bring the concert full circle, back to New Orleans and Congo Square.
Odadaa! moved to the front of the stage, beating out their traditional tempos, and the Orchestra joined them, all playing as they marched slowly off stage. What could be more Big Easy?
The orchestra will perform "Congo Square" on Tuesday at the Kennedy Center in Washington and later in the week at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City .
* Reach Tony Germanotta at (757) 446-2377 or tony.germanotta@pilotonline.com.
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