By Mike Telin
On Tuesday, March 3 at 7:30 pm at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical continues its season with the Marsalis-McAllister-Ames Trio — Branford Marsalis and Timothy McAllister, saxophones, and Liz Ames, piano. Tickets are available online.
I caught up with Branford Marsalis by phone in Durham, North Carolina. I began by asking him to share his recollection of how the trio met.
Branford Marsalis: I met Liz through her former husband who is a saxophonist. I went to a saxophone conference after I’d met her, and was just amazed at the volume of music that she could learn on the fly. If you’ve ever been to something like the North American Saxophone Alliance, you know that the pianists have to play something like twenty-five pieces in three days. And Liz had this massive volume of music that she walked around with, going from rehearsal room to rehearsal room, rehearsing with saxophonists from all over the country. I was just amazed by that. It left an impression on my mind. Wow, she’s amazing.
In this day and age it’s not unusual for classically-trained musicians to experiment with and perform music of seemingly unrelated genres. And it’s always interesting to hear how they go about incorporating their classical sensibilities into the works of bands like the Beatles or into bluegrass tunes like “Orange Blossom Special”.