‘Cool School and Hard Bop’
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis
Frederick P. Rose Hall
Streaming Through January 25

In recent seasons, much of the programming at Jazz at Lincoln Center has been devoted to examining the international status of jazz. This year, though, it’s been all about exploring generations, genres, and subgenres of jazz.  

As Wynton Marsalis said at the start of the show Sunday night, “This entire season is dedicated to redefining styles that have much more in common than they have differences.” He continued, “The idea for this season actually came from the great Gerry Mulligan, who, in a conversation with me many years ago, said, ‘Do you ever think of programming a whole season of music where we just take all the segregation out of it, and just play the music the way we envisioned it when we were playing it?’ This season is for you, Gerry.”

So far this year, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has celebrated “Hot Jazz & Swing” and “The Bebop Revolution.” Last weekend’s offering focused on the two major subgenres of jazz — somehow that’s a nicer word than “categories,” to which Duke Ellington famously objected — that were prevalent in the 1950s, “The Cool School & Hard Bop.” The program was curated and hosted by one of the longer-serving veterans of the orchestra, saxophonist Sherman Irby, and the youngest person on stage, Joe Block, a pianist, composer, and relatively recent Juilliard graduate.

Some JALC programs offer new performances of classic orchestrations, as the Swing show did in September. This program, like the Bebop set in November, was a combination of historical charts — they started with Mulligan and George Wallington’s classic “Godchild” from the Miles Davis “Birth of the Cool” band — and newly arranged orchestral interpretations.  

This concert also featured more small-group playing than usual, as in Horace Silver’s “Split Kick” from the classic 1954 “Live at Birdland” album by the original Jazz Messengers; Mr. Marsalis and saxophonist Abdias Armenteros formed the front line and drummer Obed Calviere summoned up Art Blakey’s thunderous press rolls.  

They followed with Mulligan’s “pianoless quartet” treatment of “Stardust,” with Paul Nedzila on baritone saxophone and two different trumpeters filling Chet Baker’s shoes, Kenny Rampton on Thursday and Ryan Kisor on Friday.

The next piece, a second tune by Silver, “Seńor Blues,” reintroduced a subtle note of globalism in this classic hard bop set piece. Bassist Carlos Henriquez’s arrangement was a perfect expansion of the Silver Quintet’s 1956 recording, with the trombones playing the first 12-bar chorus, then saxophonist Chris Lewis summoning Hank Mobley and trumpeter Marcus Printup doing the same for Donald Byrd. Mr. Printup also shined in Joe Block’s concert-style orchestration of Benny Golson’s memorial piece for Clifford Brown, “I Remember Clifford.”  

The evening also included two newly commissioned original works in the hard bop idiom from young pianist-composers, Luther Allison’s “Milk Route” and “For Duke Pearson” by guest pianist Benny Green. The latter is a welcome homage to an overlooked jazz auteur whose music tends to be dismissed for the perverse reason that it’s so listenable and even danceable. 

There were major benefactions in the second half. Ted Nash’s treatment of “Wow” by the blind visionary Lennie Tristano was nothing short of remarkable: It suggested how the piece might have been played by the Birth of the Cool band, with sections that replicated the original 1949 recording with alto and tenor saxophonists Alexa Tarrantino and Chris Lewis cast as Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh. There also was a passage featuring flutes and clarinets, and a tenor solo by Mr. Armenteros that accentuated Tristano’s bebop roots. 

An even bigger surprise was “Django,” written by John Lewis for the Modern Jazz Quartet, the composer also being a member of the Birth of the Cool band, like Konitz and Mulligan, and also an early supporter of Mr. Marsalis and JALC. I’ve been listening to Wynton Marsalis for 40 years now, and this is perhaps the doggone-est thing I’ve ever heard him play. He described Lewis’s music as “hot and cool at the same time,” and appropriately his highly original duo with pianist Dan Nimmer was all of the above.  

Mr. Marsalis played several choruses, alternating back and forth with Mr. Nimmer — and also switching between a cup mute and an open bell — and the inspiration seemed to be something more like “Tom Cat” by King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, before he finished by playing the “Django” melody.

The finale was a rousing treatment of a Jazz Messengers classic, Freddie Hubbard’s 1962 “Thermo.” As arranged for the orchestra by Christian McBride, the piece built to a round-robin piano session for all three keyboardists present, Messrs. Nimmer, Block, and Green, and a stratospheric trumpet solo by guest Jesus Ricardo.  

As the crowd stood up and the applause mounted, Mr. Marsalis said something under his breath — it wasn’t exactly an announcement — that seemed to anticipate the imminent shift in the political landscape as well as the technological one: “AI is coming,” he said, “but people still swing.” Amen.