“The whole purpose of this group,” Branford Marsalis has said of his quartet, “is to be more like a chamber group than a jazz group.” The Belonging Tour is where that idea meets its most precise test: a full interpretation of Keith Jarrett’s 1974 ECM album, performed Friday at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington.
About the Show
The Branford Marsalis Quartet’s Blue Note Records debut takes Jarrett’s Belonging as its subject and its challenge. The recording grew from a modest suggestion: bassist Eric Revis proposed recording the full album after the quartet performed “The Windup” — one of Jarrett’s compositions from the original recording — on their 2019 release The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul. Marsalis came to it without reverence as his operating mode: “I didn’t try to reject the idea when it occurred, but at no point did we plan to consciously pay tribute.” The New York Times heard the resulting independence in the music: “at its best, his Belonging goes deeper…it’s a performance that both honors and amplifies.”
Formed in 1986, the quartet has held the same personnel for years: Joey Calderazzo on piano since 1999, Eric Revis on bass since 1996, Justin Faulkner on drums since 2009. That kind of ensemble continuity is rare in jazz, and it shows in performance as a shared musical grammar that makes the group’s interplay feel arrived-at rather than assembled. A live reviewer described them as “casually confident, professional, cerebral, and supercharged with energy.”
Marsalis is an NEA Jazz Master and three-time Grammy Award winner whose career extends through classical concertos, Broadway composition (Fences, A Wonderful World), and film scores including Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Rustin. The quartet is his primary ensemble. The Belonging Tour runs through late 2026 with dates across North America and into Europe.
Venue & Logistics
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is a 681-seat theater in Great Barrington, MA — a room that scales well for chamber dynamics and places the audience close enough to the ensemble that the quartet’s quieter interplay carries. For a program built on that kind of internal conversation, the fit is apt. The show runs 90 minutes.
Tickets
Tickets are $69 Reserved, $79 Preferred, and $99 Premium. Members receive a $5 discount per ticket. Youth tickets (ages 30 and under) are $15 through the Box Office. The show begins at 8 p.m. on Friday, July 24. More shows in the capital region. Buy tickets