WILLY LOMAN, JAZZMAN

"Death of a Salesman."

- VINSON CUNNINGHAM

Watching Wendell Pierce act is more like listening to music than it is like taking in a play. It’s his job to carry a story forward, but he’s best enjoyed on the basis of individual line readings and gestures. At his finest, his scratchy, searching baritone can make the melody of a sentence carry meaning beyond its words. His stocky, solid body, fraught with intention, moves decisively: he twitches a shoulder or points a finger and you know what he means to get across. Often, it’s something you wont find spelled out in the script.

Pierce is probably best known for playing the wisecracking detective Bunk in The Wire,” created by David Simon I liked him better in the less plot-dependent Treme,” also by Simon, in which he plays Antoine Batiste, a wily, tricksterish New Orleans jazz trombonist who finds his calling as a public-school music teacher. Antoine moves through Treme”’s ambling milieu like a tune through a song, subject to surprising developments but always recognizably himself, suggesting a wildness and a soulful depth beyond the borders of the screen. Ifacting is an art of compression—where one movement or inflection is meant to crystallize whole social contexts and highly particular ways of being—Pierce achieved a rare mastery in Treme.” Like Antoine Batiste, Pierce is from New Orleans, and is highly interested in music. Recently, he made a guest appearance on the genre-spanning album The Ever Fonky Lowdown,” by his high-school friend Wynton Marsalis, as Game, a harshly satiric carnival barker and master of ceremonies. Here are some of Game’s lines, delivered with cruel and thrilling verve by Pierce: