Things To Come
Jon Faddis and Wynton Marsalis
An epic trumpet battle
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Dizzy Gillespie’s “Things To Come” was a rather radical big band composition for 1946, and it still sounds futuristic today.
This version has the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra accompanying two trumpet masters as Jon Faddis and Wynton Marsalis engage in a memorable trumpet battle.
Faddis comes out screaming in the upper register but Marsalis was not going to go down without a fight, playing rapid lines in his lower register and also hitting a few impressive high notes himself.
They trade choruses, eight-bar phrases and finally get down to four-bar outbursts.
Faddis, who sounds like he is out for blood, mostly stays in the stratosphere while Marsalis’ responses to him are both humorous and musical.
-Scott Yanow
Ella Fitzgerald