The word had surely got out in advance but there were still some present who genuinely didn’t know what they had come to hear. Which was Wynton Marsalis playing an unannounced gig to open Edinburgh International Festival’s Up Lates programme.
Described as a mixed bill of music and conversation that invited ticket holders to pull up an armchair and enjoy the sociable atmosphere of the festival’s home at the top of the Royal Mile, this session found the musicians mostly letting their musical brilliance doing the talking.
Marsalis can be an affable and entertaining host, slipping memories of his father, Ellis, Dizzy Gilliespie and Louis Armstrong into his introductions. He wears his trumpet virtuosity lightly, almost casually, but the chops were astonishing. In the opening Oh Lady Be Good, we were treated to a startling repertoire of glides and slides, improbably paced, is-he-ever-going-to-breathe lines and brief asides, all imbued with an unerring sense of swing and a rich feeling of the blues allied to sure musical logic.
With the now sixty-two-year-old master was a trio of younger, but also masterly musicians. Pianist Joe Webb has the whole history of jazz piano at his fingertips, and frequently in his solos, a quality that was illustrated perfectly by his Hamstrings and Hurricanes, a kind of Joplin to McCoy and beyond feature initially for trio but whose intricate melody Marsalis joined in on for the coda.
Bassist Will Sach and drummer Francesco Ciniglio presented contrasting personalities. The former was all quiet assurance whatever the tempo, the Neapolitan Ciniglio a more flamboyant and characterful presence but one whose use of the drum rims and sundry hardware was entirely at the service of the music.
The promised conversation could be said to have been delivered with Marsalis’ own Free to Be, with the trumpeter and pianist confiding in each other through mischievous phrases and punctuations, and on Dizzy Gillespie’s Wheatleigh Hall, a blues where Marsalis’ muted playing led and conversed with the trio individually and collectively.
Two guests brought out even more of the quartet’s personalities. Marsalis’ daughter, Oni, sang a remarkably mature Body and Soul to an accompaniment that was measured with slide rule precision and the Brazilian genius (Marsalis’ description) Hamilton de Holanda, as the trumpeter promised, lifted the soul quotient in the room.
De Holanda’s bandolim – a ten-string mandolin – has sat easily alongside Chick Corea and Stefano Bollani’s piano playing and here it expanded Marsalis’ quartet into a mini orchestra.
“You’ll know this tune,” said Marsalis before de Holanda sang the intro to Girl from Ipanema. We probably all knew the next tune, too, One Note Samba, but if these were arguably the most obvious illustrations available of Brazilian culture, they were delivered as if freshly minted.
The sheer clarity, shape and invention of de Holanda’s improvisations were a joy and when he and Marsalis traded fours you could feel the friendship. This was no sparring contest. It was two guys making exceptional music for fun in what might well be a contender for jazz gig of the year hereabouts.
This concert was filmed for Sky Arts and will be broadcast on 1 October at 10pm, and was supported by Supported by Sir Ewan and Lady Brown and Flure Grossart.
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Wynton is the greatest cultural treasure of our lifetime.