Delfeayo Marsalis’ Uptown Jazz Orchestra Releases Jazz Party

For the better part of a decade, acclaimed trombonist, producer and composer Delfeayo Marsalis has spent Wednesday nights at the helm of his sprawling Uptown Jazz Orchestra’s residency at Snug Harbor in New Orleans. With Jazz Party, Marsalis’ seventh album as a leader, he delivers an original composition-heavy set of music that showcases the same exuberant energy of those shows, complete with modernized twists on New Orleans songbook gems and musical traditions, and swinging, groove-infused homages to the contributions of modern jazz masters.

Spiked with the NEA Jazz Master’s wry wit and visionary production acumen, Jazz Party sees Marsalis – along with Roger Lewis, Terrance Taplin, Khari Lee,  and more of the Crescent City’s finest musicians – making a strong musical case for the notion modern New Orleans jazz can and should be as celebratory in nature as it is cerebral in execution. 

“Music, like all art, should have some type of contemporary relevance,” Marsalis says, joking that his decision to call 2016’s UJO recording premiere Make America Great Again missed fulfilling its “comedic relief potential” by “a few votes” in the 2016 election. 

“Jazz, the indigenous American music, is a music of celebration and optimism,” he continues. “The Uptown Jazz Orchestra is such a fun band that I wanted to capture its uniqueness. The idea was to keep the wide variety of styles that we play but to really capture the joy that is a central trademark of the band.” 

Recorded in February and May 2019 at New Orleans’ Esplanade Studios with the help of Marsalis’ longtime production partner Patrick Smith (and without the so-called “dreaded bass direct”), Jazz Party opens with a laidback and languorous title track that brings “The Voice” alum Tonya Boyd-Cannon’s gospel roots in touch with the band’s preternatural sense of groove. 

The Dirty Dozen’s Roger Lewis, an original member of the UJO, contributes another album highlight with his burning “Blackbird Special” solo as the band delivers a perfect balance of wiggle, funk and propulsive motion that urges its way forward, second line-style. 

The breezy “Seventh Ward Boogaloo” shifts gears to highlight the lasting influence of musicians who have historically called that neighborhood home, from Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet to Lee Dorsey and Allen Toussaint.

Another standout, the Marsalis original “Raid on the Mingus House Party,” turns up the tension with a dramatic horn section performance that kicks off the narrative arc implied by the title before Ryan Hanseler’s gorgeously restrained piano work guides the melody away from the proverbial cliff’s edge. According to Marsalis, it was inspired by “aspects of the current social climate in America” that seem to be continually “heightened by extreme political negativity, mass shootings and racial community divisions.” When all ten of the tune’s moving melodic parts get resolved, the music reminds us that, as Marsalis puts it, “love for humanity” really can “reign victorious” even in the most troubled and confusing times. 

The album begins and ends its second half with two takes on “Mboya’s Midnight Cocktail,” delivering the kind of funny bar banter one might overhear between sets during a UJO performance at Snug Harbor. 

Between the first incarnation and its final reprise, the orchestra serves up a hilarious riff on its hometown’s hyper-local obsessions (“I’m so New Orleans I remember when crawfish was $1.27 a pound,” Dr. Brice Miller raps on “So New Orleans”); the Scott Johnson centric jump blues meets “modern tonality” flavored “Irish Whiskey Blues” and an anthemic rendition of the Soul Rebels’ “Let Your Mind Be Free,” plus funk-laced tributes to Roy Hargrove (“Dr. Hardgroove”) and New Orleans’ cultural connections to the Caribbean (“Caribbean Second Line”). 

Jazz Party offers a deftly varied look at the role of joy, humor and straight-up fun in jazz, an artform Marsalis points out in his liner notes was created by a group of people seeking to “define life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in a “psychological vacuum” necessitated by the systematic denial of their own human rights. That one band can so compellingly reflect the many nuances embedded in that fundamental cultural concept is a major artistic achievement in itself. 

Over the course of his prolific career, trombonist, composer, producer, educator and NEA Jazz Master Delfeayo Marsalishas been hailed as one of the “most imaginative...trombonists of his generation,” a title that reflects decades of musical exploration, preparation and risk-taking, much of which began during his childhood in New Orleans, where his father, Ellis Marsalis, introduced him to jazz in the family home. Eventually, Delfeayo says, he “gravitated toward the trombone,” which felt like “an extension of my personality.” He was simultaneously developing his ear for music production after his brothers, Branford and Wynton Marsalis, piqued his interest in the process, which he continued to develop while producing their demo tapes and interning at Allen Toussaint’s Sea Saint Studio. He’s gone on to produce more than 100 recordings for artists including his brothers, his father, Spike Lee, Harry Connick, Jr., Terence Blanchard, Preservation Hall Jazz Band and others. An exceptional trombonist, Delfeayo has toured internationally with bands led by Art Blakey, Slide Hampton, Abdullah Ibrahim, Max Roach and Elvin Jones, as well as his own groups. 

Jazz Party, the trombonist’s second studio album with his 10-plus-year-old Uptown Jazz Orchestra, comes on the heels of 2017’s live album, Kalamazoo, and 2016’s UJO studio recording debut, Make America Great Again!, which uses the orchestra’s stylistic fluidity to fuse its hometown sound and musical history with songs associated with American patriotism. Other highlights in his discography include The Last Southern Gentlemen (2014), his first album-length collaboration with his father and 2010’s stunning Sweet Thunder, a fresh octet reimagination of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s suite of the same name. Pontius Pilate’s Decision (1992), his dramatic musical take on biblical tales, remains a standout. 

Delfeayo recently served as Music Producer for the film “Bolden!,” a mythical account of the life of Buddy Bolden, and has worked extensively in arts education. He holds a master’s degree in jazz performance from the University of Louisville and an honorary doctorate from New England College. He is a graduate of Berklee College of Music and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.