Wynton Marsalis’ All-Star Band Comes to Town to Accompany “Louis: A Silent Film”

Wynton Marsalis

Throughout his celebrated career, trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and arranger Wynton Marsalis, currently director of the Lincoln Center jazz program and leader of its orchestra, has embraced with aplomb diverse musical opportunities and settings. Longtime jazz afficionados may recall that Marsalis’ quintet was featured at a festival staged outdoors at UCSD in the early 1980s, performing straight-ahead jazz from his debut album when he was in his early 20s. Years later, he joined a symphony to play Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale at the California. Center for the Arts in Escondido with author and critic Stanley Crouch doing spoken word parts.

Marsalis’ ongoing audacity will be vigorously displayed on Sunday, May 18, 7pm, at the Balboa Theatre in downtown San Diego. He will appear with pianist Cecile Licad and lead a 13-member all-star ensemble as they perform accompaniment to Louis: A Silent Film.

Written and directed by Dan Pritzker and shot by Academy Award-winning cinematographer, the late Vilmos Zsigmond, the 80-minute movie, produced by Dipperflicks LLC, is a tribute to the early days of cinema as well as the music born in the late 1800s and early 1900s’ New Orleans. It is inspired by early cinema, jazz, and the life of Armstrong.

The score consists of a pastiche of solo piano pieces, written by composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk and pieces either orchestrated or composed and arranged by Marsalis.

“It’s always good to go back to music that was played during the incubation period for American music and to see how our music is linked,” Marsalis said in a recent interview via Zoom. “We even get to hear Gottschalk’s music and Jelly Roll Morton’s music… and the type of modern music we play and all these things with a silent film.

“It’s really an interesting modern concept that Dan is using an early medium to show that it can still be expressive and for us, always, the opportunity to play and play for people is a blessing.”

As described in the publicity notes to the video release, Louis is a “modern reïmagining of early silent film, paying homage to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, beautiful black women, and the birth of American music.”

Louis Armstrong

The film conveys a dream-like fantasy of what the life of six-year-old Armstrong might have been like as he navigated the streets and alleys amid the bars and bordellos of “The District.” Marsalis said said that he was attracted to the project in part because it was “so different.”

“I felt like it wasn’t trying to be historical in terms of being accurate, but it was a poetic and mythic kind of take on what was there,” he said.

Played by Anthony Coleman, little Louis, who according to legend was born on July 4, 1900, is seen trooping through the byways of the Big Easy, carrying a toy horn and later a cornet, while encountering some of the renowned ensembles of the era.

Some of the scenes are set in the infamous Mahogany Hall bar and brothel where interracial exchanges occurred in defiance of the segregation that reigned in the South. Against this backdrop is the subplot of a corrupt white politician caught up in a sex scandal.

“It had a lot of the themes in it from that time, a lot of things we knew about,” Marsalis said. “[It] was set in a brothel. It was a certain type of New Orleans life that a young Louis Armstrong would have known—the judge, the governmental corruption, the police, cheating on the voting, the sexual scandal—just the kind of joy and horror of it all.”

There is no one more qualified to participate in the project than Marsalis, who hails from a celebrated musical New Orleans family of whom the late Ellis Marsalis was the patriarch. A pianist, Ellis Marsalis named Wynton after Wynton Kelly, an ebullient keyboard practitioner noted for his collaborations with Miles Davis in the 1950s and early ’60s.

Wynton Marsalis’ older brother is the acclaimed saxophonist Branford and his younger brothers include trombonist Delfeayo and drummer Jason, the latter of whom will anchor the traps set in the Balboa Theatre gig.

Louis, including the live music, debuted at the Apollo Theater for its East Coast tour. San Diego is the second scheduled stop on the West Coast tour, which kicks off May 17 in Santa Barbara.

The San Diego show will be followed by appearances in Irvine; Los Angeles; Chandler, Arizona; Oakland; Santa Rosa; Port Townsend and Seattle, Washington; and Eugene and Portland, Oregon.

In addition to Wynton and Jason Marsalis, the ensemble is scheduled to include Carlos Henriquez, bass; Adam Birnbaum, piano; Daniel Block, reeds; Jarien Jaminilla, reeds; Alex Tarantino, reeds; Dion Tucker, trombone; John Allred, trombone and Sousaphone; Ashlin Parker, trumpet; and James Carter, reeds. Andy Farber will conduct, and Sidney Hopson will provide classical percussion.

“Over all these years, ‘we’re always trying to keep the musicianship on a certain level, and we’ve been fortunate to have really enthusiastic audiences. It’s really been quite a blessing because it’s been quite a long time. People have been very enthusiastic and it’s something I’m very grateful about.”

The La Jolla Music Society presents Louis, a silent film with live musical performance by Wynton Marsalis and Cecile Licad (with a prelude interview hosted by Robert John Hughes at 6pm). Sunday, May 18 at the Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., 7pm.