There are certain combinations of artist and venue that require no embellishment — only acknowledgment. Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center will present Sing & Swing at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on Sunday, May 3 at 7 p.m. It is, by any measure, one of the more distinguished bookings of the spring season in the Hudson Valley.
About Jazz at Lincoln Center & Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis occupies a singular position in American music. Nine Grammy Awards. A Pulitzer Prize for Blood on the Fields in 1997 — the first jazz composition to receive the honor. He has served as artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center since 1987, building it into the foremost institutional home for jazz performance and education in the world. To see the JLCO perform live is to witness one of the great working ensembles in any genre.
The Sing & Swing program is precisely what its title suggests — a celebration of the vocal and rhythmic traditions at the heart of the jazz canon. Under Marsalis’s direction, these performances tend toward the ecstatic. They are rigorous and joyful in equal measure.
Venue Info
There may be no more fitting setting for this kind of music than Bethel Woods. The venue sits on the original Woodstock festival site in Sullivan County — ground that has absorbed more musical history than perhaps any other patch of earth in the state. The pavilion seats roughly 16,000, and the acoustics are excellent for orchestral and ensemble work. The museum on the grounds is worth the drive even without a ticket to a show. A May evening here, with the sun going down over the hills as Marsalis and the Orchestra open into the first number — that is an experience that repays the trip many times over.
Tickets & Pricing
Tickets for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Sing & Swing at Bethel Woods are on sale now through Ticketmaster. An evening of this caliber, in this setting, is not one to deliberate over.