By Jeremy Jefferson, Graduate Music Fellow
Penn Live Arts
As someone new to living in Philadelphia, I love exploring different areas of the city. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed emerging from the L on to the University of Pennsylvania’s performing arts home Penn Live Arts (PLA), a grantee of the Foundation’s. PLA was hosting the Branford Marsalis Quartet, which performed their 2025 album, Belonging.
The first thing I noticed was how accommodating the staff were. It was not just me, but the entire staff welcomed all guests kindly and courteously. I had the pleasure of meeting Communications consultant Katherine Blodgett and the Executive and Artistic Director Christopher A. Gruits who both showed how much they care about their work and music -particularly jazz.
Jazz & Branford Marsalis
Gruits led a pre-show talk with renowned saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Branford Marsalis, who shared anecdotes from his life, as well as how he understands and enjoys jazz. I particularly enjoyed how he interacted with the audience by answering questions about his family and how he interprets jazz. The questions that stood out to me (and are the basis of this blog post) are: how do jazz musicians understand jazz, and how can classical musicians understand it? The answer to the first is a lot simpler than most (classical) musicians think -“it’s just not that complicated.” And, as a classical musician, I’ll give my own interpretation on the answer to the second.
I went into this talk thinking I would learn some “new truth” that I didn’t understand about jazz. I’ve always viewed it as the most complicated uncomplicated form of music. I have a surface level understanding of what jazz is: main melody (sax), harmony (piano), bassline (bass), and percussion. Marsalis explained that it’s all about feels and vibes. For example, he has a particular focus on thinking about why the music works, versus analyzing the sets (jazz numbers) on a surface level.
To further elaborate, Marsalis gave an example from one of his students whom he asked to listen to the famous jazz number “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck. The student explained the key signature, the time signature, instrumentation, but Marsalis argued that it wasn’t really the point. He then went on to explain that just saying the music in five isn’t enough – it’s three over two, and it’s a mixture of the drums/bass that makes it work. That being said, how does this all relate to classical music?
For Classical Musicians
I love Bach, and I realized during the talk the similarities between Bach and jazz. In fact, I’d say that Bach is jazz for classical musicians. In the classical music world, everyone has an opinion about Bach, but I believe that the most important part about a Bach interpretation is how the music in an interpretation works. Does it randomly jump in dynamic and speed? Is it too soft and fluttery? Are there “goalposts” on where the performer wants to go toward? Or even away from?
Making sense of Bach leads me to the same conclusion about jazz: Bach is the most complicated uncomplicated composer to interpret and perform. Let’s take a look at one of the biggest champions of Bach’s music: cellist and composer Pablo Casals. I highly recommend looking up “Pablo Casals Bach Suites,” because it captures this concept very well. Similar to what Marsalis was sharing, Casals is able to form his own way on how Bach works and truly listened to what he was playing in the moment. There are pillars that exist in Bach that exist in jazz that exist in pop music and so on. Identifying these pillars are the most important step in interpretation. Let’s take Brubeck’s Take Five as another example – I mentioned the drummer and the bassist, but how do they make the piece “work?” They control everything: pulse, dynamics, harmony, and much more – the “three on two” feel comes from the pizzicato in the bass.
Branford Marsalis’s Show
In the talk with Gruits, Marsalis mentioned that he only wanted to play with a “drummer that could make the instrument sing.” I didn’t know what he meant by this until drummer Justin Faulkner showed how he could do this very well, especially in the song Solstice. The beginning drum section of this piece is like nothing I’ve ever heard – it feels like the drummer has the melody before the saxophone even comes in. It’s such a simple thing, but it sets the mood beautifully. Then, towards the end of the song, we end up in a completely different vibe than we started. It felt like we were meant to go there as listeners, and it made me realize how important of a role the drummer is.
Overall, each pillar of the set was distinct, but the different performers blended instruments into each other so beautifully. I could truly see how this Quartet “makes it work.”
My Personal Thoughts on the Show
I made it a mission of mine to listen to more jazz music after Marsalis’s pre-show talk and the performance. In my own personal practice, I’ve been finding difficulty in keeping pulse while creating melody lines that make sense to the listener, but the Branford Marsalis Quartet captured this beautifully within the Zellerbach Theatre. Jazz as a whole informs classical musicians on how much more understanding can exist by looking way outside of the usual realm that we are used to. I outlined a small amount of what I believe jazz can do for classical music, but I believe there is so much more to explore. I highly recommend listening to Branford Marsalis Quartet’s 2025 album Belonging and discovering, in your own way, how the music works.
