Big Train

07/13/1999 3:00 AM, LAUNCH
Tim Sheridan

As artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis became something of a self-deputized defender of classic jazz. The trumpeter steadfastly honored the legacy of Duke Ellington and, many thought, dissed more adventurous players. His treatment of the Thelonious Monk catalog on a recent disc came off as an effort to challenge critics who would call him narrow-minded.

But this effort, an homage to the American myth of the train, finds him backward-gazing more than ever before. The influence of past masters such as Ellington, Armstrong, and even Benny Goodman, is all too apparent on the classic swing of "Observation Car" and "Smokestack Shuffle." About the most up-to-date he gets is in the funky breaks of "Engine."

In the end, there is nothing formally wrong with the music, except that is all seems too formal. Perhaps if Marsalis wasn't trying so hard to create "classic" jazz, the work might sound less forced.