Welcome to Music for Life, enhancing the Armstrong concert experience. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. In today's episode, we continue a three-part series where we play a concert presented in Armstrong Auditorium on February 2nd, 2021, featuring our very own jazz virtuoso and assistant music director here at Armstrong, Mark Jenkins. This concert featured a tribute to the late jazz legend Ellis Marsalis. To do this, Mr. Jenkins was accompanied by six incredible jazz musicians from right here in central Oklahoma.
In this particular episode, we will hear the rest of the program that served specifically as a tribute to Ellis Marsalis. So stick around as we hear songs like Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans, A Nightingale Sang in Barclays Square, The Very Thought of You, and more today on Music for Life. For our last two episodes of Music for Life, we've been replaying a concert that took place here at Armstrong Auditorium on February 2nd, 2021. This concert featured pianist, vocalist, composer, arranger, and assistant music director here, Mark Jenkins. His program was a tribute.
to Ellis Marsalis. He was joined by six phenomenal Oklahoma-based musicians, Jay Wilkinson trumpet, Vince Norman saxophone, Floyd Haynes clarinet and saxophone, Jamar Poteet drums, Raul Rias on bass, and finally, Zach Lee on trombone, who was also responsible for one of the arrangements we'll hear on today's episode. Zach is also the one who mixed and mastered the concert that you're hearing on this program. So thank you, Zach, for these wonderful recordings and mixes. In our first of this three-part series, we played the shorter first half of this concert. This included a variety of jazz standards, and it was not intended to be the Ellis Marsalis tribute part of the program. It was designed, rather, to introduce us to all the players on stage. In that episode, we heard Take the A-Train, How Deep is the Ocean, The Next Day, an original composition from Mr. Jenkins, his inventive string bass and vocals arrangement of On the Street Where You Live, Summertime, Joy Spring, and Sweet Georgia Brown.
In the second episode, we played the first part of the second half, which began the Ellis Marsalis tribute. We heard the songs Have You Met Miss Jones, Hallucinations, Stardust, Linus and Lucy, I Cover the Waterfront, and Mozartin. In that episode, we also highlighted some of Mr. Jenkins' musical background and directed you to where you could find more of his material online. As always, you can go back to listen to any of our past episodes at kpcg.fm. That's kpcg.fm. Or, of course, through the iTunes podcast app or through SoundCloud. In today's episode, we're going to hear the remainder of the second half, which concludes that tribute to Ellis Marsalis. This is also a good episode to talk about Ellis Marsalis, the object of this concert's homage. In the lead-up to this concert, we had an episode of Music for Life intended to prepare our audiences for this event. And in that episode, Mr. Jenkins gave us a nice bit of background about Mr. Marsalis and his musical legacy.
So let's hear that again before we get back into replaying the concert from February 2nd. Ellis Marsalis died last year at the age of 85, probably the first well-known person I heard of as dying from complications related to COVID-19. As you probably already know, he is the father of several other jazz musicians, the legendary jazz trumpet player and composer Wynton Marsalis, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who did a brief stint as band leader when Jay Leno took over The Tonight Show, trombonist and producer Delfeo Marsalis, and drummer Jason Marsalis. Poet and music historian Kalamu Yasalam has described Ellis Marsalis as both literally and figuratively the patriarch of modern jazz in New Orleans. No one has done more for jazz education than the Marsalis family. I remember seeing Wynton's educational videos, Marsalis on Music, when I was still in high school, and I have it in book form. The entire family was on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Ellis' students included Harry Connick Jr., Diana Krall, Terrence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, Nicholas Payton, his four sons, and I meet musicians all the time who tell me how inspired they were by Ellis in their formative years as jazz musicians.
Just last summer, thousands of musicians were streaming free jazz instructional videos of Wynton Marsalis live from Wynton Center, and I couldn't help thinking about that as the legacy of Ellis Marsalis. He impacted not just his students, but our entire community. I wanted to do a tribute concert because there is no jazz musician who had more impact on my playing personally. I could fill a book with transcriptions I've done of his playing. So that was Mr. Jenkins giving us some background on Ellis Marsalis, the musical legend he was paying tribute to on his February 2nd concert at Armstrong Auditorium. So without any further ado now, let's start listening to the remainder of that program. We'll pick up where we left off.
first with a song called Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans. This song was premiered in a 1947 movie performed by Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. After that, we'll hear Mr. Jenkins' transcription of Ellis Marsalis' version of A Nightingale Sang in Barclay Square, a British song written in 1939 by Manning Sherwin. All right, this next one is called You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans, and we'll get several of the guys in there. Did you want to hear some more clarinet? That's what I wanted, more clarinet. Know what it means to miss New Orleans and miss her each night and day.
I know I'm not wrong, cause the feeling's getting stronger the longer I stay away. Missed the moss-covered vines, the old sugar pines, where mockingbirds used to sing. And I'd like to see that old lazy Mississippi, a honey spring on the bayou, a Creole tune that fills the air.
And I dream about magnolias in June. And soon I'm wishing I was there. Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? When that's where you left your heart. And there's just one thing more. I miss the one I care for. More than I miss New Orleans. Floyd Haynes on clarinet. Okay, so that two hours I spent with Mr. Marsalis, most of the time we spent on a nightingale sang in Barclays Square.
So I'll go ahead and play that for you as a piano solo. You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. In today's episode, we are playing a concert presented in Armstrong Auditorium on February 2, 2021. This concert featured our very own Mark Jenkins, along with six other great Oklahoma-based jazz musicians presenting a tribute to the late Ellis Marsalis. And this is the final episode in a three-part series where we are playing this concert in its entirety.
We just heard two great numbers from that program. A nightingale sang in Barclay Square. And before that, we heard, do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? And those were two tunes that Ellis Marsalis really made his own. We'll continue with two more numbers from the program. These were the final two of the program, though there was an encore after that, which I promise we'll get to. For this set, we'll hear a tune written by the famous trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in the early 1940s, and which became one of his signature pieces. Later, Ellis Marsalis recorded this on his well-known 1990 album called A Night in Snug Harbor. And then after that, we'll hear a song originally recorded by the vocal legend Billie Holiday, which Ellis Marsalis also made his own signature rendition of later. So here's The Very Thought of You, and before that, A Night in Tunisia.
Ellis had a weekly gig at Snug Harbor in New Orleans for 30 years, and there's a fantastic album called A Night in Snug Harbor. The last number on it is A Night in Tunisia, which we'll do the arrangement they did on that album here tonight. Dizzy Gillespie's A Night in Tunisia. Vince Norman, it really is a tenor saxophone this time. Dave Wilkinson back there on trumpet, Mr. Zach Lee on trombone, Jamar Poteet on drums, Raul Elias on bass, Floyd Haynes on the saxophone.
We have one number left for you. When I went through Ellis Marsalis' catalog, the one thing he had recorded more than anything else was the very thought of you. So we put together a special arrangement of the very thought of you in honor of Ellis Marsalis. And thanks to Mr. Zach Lee for the arrangement.
You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. In today's episode, we've been hearing a concert presented in Armstrong Auditorium on February 2nd, 2021. This concert featured our very own Mark Jenkins, along with six other great Oklahoma-based jazz musicians, presenting a tribute to the late Ellis Marsalis. We just heard The Very Thought of You, a rendition that was an homage to Ellis Marsalis' piano solo version, but that was arranged for the entire group by the trombonist on stage that evening, Zach Lee.
That's just a great arrangement by Zach. And as we've mentioned, Zach is also responsible for mixing and mastering the recording from this concert so we can hear it in such a refined way in these episodes of Music for Life. Now, even though that was the song that ended the Ellis Marsalis tribute, Mr. Jenkins and friends had another number up their collective sleeve, a great Dixieland tune to wrap up the entire celebration as an encore. This is the 1928 classic, a song originally recorded by Louis Armstrong called Basin Street Blues. Before we play that, I just want to remind you that more information about all our events at Armstrong Auditorium can be found at armstrongauditorium.org. That's armstrongauditorium.org or by following Armstrong Auditorium on its many social media outlets. I'll also point you to today's show notes, which include a link to Mark Jenkins.
Thank you. That's one of my favorites as well because we both hail from St. Louis and we are St. Louis Cardinals baseball fans. In addition to that link, you can check out pcg.church where Mr. Jenkins has contributed to a number of projects at pcg.church. Just click on the resources tab and then the music tab and no login is required to enjoy those things there on that music tab. You can enjoy musicals that he has had leading roles in. You can listen to oratorios he's conducted, choral orchestral projects that is. And you can also find a number of inspirational albums produced by the Philadelphia Church of God that Mr. Jenkins has helped to produce, write, arrange.
and or perform on. Plus, under the Extras tab on that same page, the resources slash music page, go down to the Extras tab and you can hear his original orchestral composition written for the dedication ceremony of Armstrong Auditorium itself. So again, here is the final work on Mr. Jenkins' February 2nd concert at Armstrong Auditorium. This was the encore for the evening titled Basin Street Blues. I hope you enjoy. Won't you come along with me? They don't even meet all men. To the Mississippi.
We'll take the boat to the land of dreams. Sail down the river, down to New Orleans. The band's there to greet us. Old friends to meet us. Where we all meet. Go down the river, down to New Orleans.
You have been listening to Music for Life, a production of KPCG 101.3 on the FM dial in Edmond, Oklahoma. From the Herbert W. Armstrong College campus, I'm Ryan Malone. Thanks for joining me.