It was fitting that the opening was on April Fool’s Day, 1994, because Marsalis went beyond all that even those who most admired his writing expected of him. Nothing quite like it had ever been written, either by a jazz musician or one from another discipline. But it might also be beautiful.īecause of the historical importance of the premiere of Blood On The Fields, these liner notes contain an adaptation of the original program notes and the comments that Wynton Marsalis made on his bog work and its meaning. The rhythm and tune of this ride might be rough. This took place on the stage of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City, a town where people work at not being impressed.
A great thing rises before us and we all seem to know what it means at exactly the same time. In the years following Marsalis’ award, the Pulitzer Prize for Music has been awarded posthumously to Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.ĭownload the Blood on the Fields Playbill and Libretto During the five preceding decades the Pulitzer Prize jury refused to recognize jazz musicians and their improvisational music, reserving this distinction for classical composers. In 1997 Wynton Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio Blood On The Fields. Telling the story of two slaves, Jesse and Leona, it carries us along on their difficult journey to freedom, a journey in which they, and by implication all of us, must move beyond a preoccupation with personal power and learn that true freedom is, and must be, shared. Risk exposing your ears to the first notes of BLOOD ON THE FIELDS, hear the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra wail through “Calling the Indians Out,” the opening invocation to the spirit of the first people whose blood soaked American soil in the long, painful birth of the American republic, and you’ll sit spellbound to the echo of the last note of Wynton Marsalis’s epic oratorio on slavery and freedom.
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