Wycliffe Gordon earned recognition as a trombonist through his long association with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra directed by Wynton Marsalis. His playing incorporates scatting, multi-note phrases, slides, and plunges that evoke the 1930s. He has performed alongside Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Henderson, Branford Marsalis, Lionel Hampton, Tommy Flanagan, and Shirley Horn. Fellow musicians refer to him as “Pine Cone,” a nickname tied to his childhood in the piney woods of Georgia.
An Ellington-era sensibility drew the attention of Wynton Marsalis during a workshop the trumpeter conducted at Florida A&M University, Gordon’s alma mater. That encounter led to Gordon’s 1989 entry into both the Wynton Marsalis Septet and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, where he contributed as performer and composer. Like Charles Mingus, Gordon reports hearing music continuously in his head and has transcribed portions of it for worldwide performances by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Listeners to National Public Radio have encountered his work without realizing it, since he composed the network’s theme song in 1993.
An admirer of Louis Armstrong, J.J. Johnson, and Jack Teagarden, Gordon favors a melodic approach in both performance and writing. That preference appears throughout his recordings, beginning with the 1996 duet album Bone Structure, made with trombonist Ron Westray. On the 1999 release Slidin’ Home he is joined by Victor Goines, Eric Reed, Rodney Whitaker, Herlin Riley, Milt Grayson, Joe Temperley, and Randy Sandke, displaying influences that stretch from big band to gospel. The 2000 album The Search extends across wide stylistic territory and features Gordon on didgeridoo.
His gospel roots surface on The Gospel Truth, also from 2000, reflecting the fact that his father served as pianist at the church the trumpeter grew up in. The 2001 recording What You Dealin’ With stays in a jazz idiom, mixing original compositions with jazz standards. Gordon’s 2002 release We pairs him with pianist Eric Reed for interpretations of both jazz and gospel material and stands among his strongest efforts.
In addition to performing and teaching at the music school he founded in Augusta, Georgia, Gordon undertook the score for Oscar Micheaux’s 1925 silent film Body and Soul, which starred Paul Robeson and examined race, religion, and small-town Southern life. Drawing on his own Southern background, he created music evoking the church, the bars, and the home for performance by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Gordon has also begun to explore vocalizing, an activity he intends to pursue more often, and the results promise to be first-rate given the exuberant manner in which Wycliffe Gordon commits himself to every undertaking, body and soul.
