Delfeayo Marsalis & The Uptown Jazz Orchestra
510 Embarcadero West, Oakland
March 11, 2025
Having interviewed all the musical Marsalis brothers — Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo, and Jason, in order of age — as well as their late father, Ellis, I have documentary evidence that they like to tell stories, including about each other. Delfeayo, now 59, had some leading up to and between the set of nine tunes he presented with his Uptown Jazz Orchestra earlier this month at Yoshi’s in Oakland. “I’m the family diplomat,” he announced, and this attribute was borne out in his high spirited and supportive interactions with the nine other members of his ensemble. This Marsalis, also the producer of numerous of the family’s recordings, is another sort of unelected diplomat vital to these times, someone who in performances and on recordings can irrigate an entire morally parched nation with the bubbling joy of his native New Orleans, and even trade it globally, without need of tariffs.
Marsalis formed the award-winning Orchestra in 2007, and its roster changes regularly. Aside from their regional resource, all the current mostly youngish players evidenced at Yoshi’s their connections with the long heritage of different genres of jazz and popular music. Marsalis spoke of having appeared decades ago at the original Yoshi’s — on Claremont in Berkeley — with bandleader Art Blakey, and at the current location in Jack London Square with drummer Elvin Jones. But the band’s opener on March 11th was a lyrical Crescent City sendup of “It’s All Over Now”, written by the Womacks and made world-famous by the Rolling Stones. John Gray, one of a pair of clarion trumpeters, led the audience in the repeated titular refrain. The Orchestra arguably squeezed more juice from this standard than anyone previous, which is the case with many of their numbers.
“Snowball” originally appeared on the band’s recording Make America Great Again, released in the year of Donald Trump’s first ride to the White House. More harmonically demanding than the opening tune, it had Khari Allen Lee’s alto sax solo and the chorusing of the other horns extending towards the avant garde territory of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). On trumpet, Andrew Baham, also one of the principal arrangers, took a different, more Milesy-minimalist modal approach, but sweet. And Jason Stewart and Jarrel Allen percolated energetically on bass and drums, respectively. (Marsalis had introduced Stewart as “our own original DEI” — he appeared as the Orchestra’s sole Caucasian.)
From "New Suit", Khari Allen Lee pulls out a quote from John Coltrane's "Resolution
“New Suit” was borrowed from The Wild Magnolias, a touring tribe of Black Masking Indians, more commonly called Mardi Gras Indians. Victor Campbell, who’d already exhibited a powerful barrelhouse command of the piano, here introduced a big band arrangement with some retro swing. (Fellow Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés had predicted of the 30-year-old Campbell that he would revolutionize Cuban jazz piano.) Marsalis, on one of many trombone solos throughout the evening, detoured into ticklish polytonality, setting the tone for a repeated riff of tantalizingly curious harmonies by the other horns, and an engaging baritone sax solo by Shaena Ryan (why have so many women chosen the bari?). No matter how odd or loose the arrangements, this was certifiably a very tight band. The extended and exported spirit of the previous week’s Mardi Gras continued into “Doing What We Gotta Do”, a tribute by Marsalis to his father, with alto player Lee doubling on soprano sax, swaying a serpentine hypnotic line, then shifting onto a Trane track.
Yoshi’s clear sightlines and comfortable seating arrangement enhanced the audience connection vital to this kind of a show. Watching Marsalis grinning and gabbing from the stage between songs, I was reminded of his having told me, in our 2014 interview, that, “Dad is purely about the music, he’s like the straight man, but I’m having a good time, cracking jokes and dancing.” Introducing an innovative and funky take on “Summertime”, Marsalis purposely mispronounced the names of a cadre of classical composers, belying the extensive study he’d made of them as a teenager at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA), where his father was one of the founding faculty.
Bandleader Delfeayo Marsalis solos on "Summertime"
For the Gershwin composition, Marsalis employed a Harmon mute for wah-wah effect, and quoted “It Don’t Mean a Thing”, the theme from tv’s “Peter Gunn:”, and Thelonious Monk. Tenor saxist Orlando Gilbert picked the classical “Für Elise” for his own quotation in an appealing soulful and moody solo. Overall, this ensemble harvested the most bountiful and variegated batch of musical quotes I’ve ever heard.
“Carnival Time”
Al Johnson’s 1960 Mardi Gras standard “Carnival Time” provided more engaging vocals by Banham and a benign high-low exchange between Lee and Taplin. “Confessin’”, popularized by Fats Waller in 1929, was presented as a slow drag, with thrumming bass backup, interpreted by Campbell with sentiment and soul, holding to the intent of the songwriter, as Monk had on his solo recording. Marsalis irresistibly showcased the vox humana qualities of the trombone. “Cherokee” incorporated a tribute to the late New Orleans clarinetist Alvin Batiste’s contrafact of that song, titled “Cochise”, performed at a rapid bop rate, one of the more purely jazzy parts of this program.
Then Marsalis stopped to remark, “There’s a big sign up there that says, ‘Stop at 8:45'. So what’s the deal? Just one more?”
The audience was audibly reluctant to let him go. So he and his krewe engaged them in a stand-up, clap-along, handkerchief-waving rendition of the antebellum “Li’l Liza Jane”, in a brassy trad jazz mode, Banham’s gleaming smile reflecting the transplanted glee of these Bay Area fans.
