It was a rare opportunity for our antipodean audience to experience 15 of the world’s best jazz musicians when the unparalleled Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) ensemble visited the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC). Trumpet titan, Pulitzer Prize and nine-time Grammy winner Wynton Marsalis headed the virtuosos as the Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He is also the Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis at QPAC. Photo © Darren Thomas

The All Jazz is Modern concert focussed on one of the founding fathers of jazz, Duke Ellington (Edward Kennedy Ellington), with JLCO arrangements of his music and Ellington-inspired original compositions. The JLCO ensemble has revived the significance of Ellington’s music and the seriousness of jazz as an art form. Marsalis describes jazz as “America’s music and part of the fabric of our country, the way we speak our language, the way we interact with each other, the tensions and dynamics that make our country what it is, the basic forms and things that we use to comport ourselves-all of that is...