Profile

Wynton Marsalis is a world-renowned trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and a leading advocate of American culture. Raised in a musical family in New Orleans, Louisiana, he began performing jazz and classical trumpet music from an early age. In 1980, just after moving to New York to attend The Juilliard School, he toured with the legendary Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. In the four decades since, he has rekindled widespread international interest in jazz through performances, educational initiatives, books, curricula, and public advocacy. Between his 1982 debut and the present, he has released 127 jazz, classical and alternative recordings, composing hundreds of original pieces. He has performed in 858 cities and 65 countries across the globe to date. He is the recipient of 41 honorary degrees and has been appointed UN Messenger of Peace (2001) and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur (2009). He is a recipient of both The National Medal of Arts (2005) and The National Humanities Medal (2016). He presently serves as Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Musical Director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School, and President of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation.

Read more...

Multi-talented musician, Wynton Marsalis is globally recognized as an outstanding trumpet player, an award-winning composer, and a leading light for music education. Passionate about music in all forms, he is possibly best known for his commitment to jazz and his recognition of it as America’s greatest original art form, on par with classical western music.
Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, a city at the heart of the American jazz tradition. There, he grew up in a talented musical family. His father Ellis was a jazz pianist and director of the jazz program at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). His older brother Branford is a celebrated saxophonist; his two younger brothers Delfeayo and Jason are well-known trombonists and drummers, respectively. Marsalis attended NOCCA while at high school and studied jazz and classical music, performing regularly with numerous jazz bands in New Orleans, as well as with classical music orchestras and ensembles.
A talented trumpet player, Marsalis entered the Tanglewood Music Center at the age of 17 (one of the youngest musicians accepted at the time), winning the prestigious Harry Shapiro Award. In 1979 he moved to New York to study classical music at The Juilliard School. Although still a student, he was soon performing in the many jazz clubs of New York and was invited to join Art Blakey’s legendary Jazz Messengers for their tour in 1980. The tour and Art Blakey’s inspirational leadership made a lasting impression and led to Marsalis’ primary focus becoming jazz.
Marsalis signed his first recording contract in 1980 and in 1981 assembled his own quintet, marking the beginning of his independent musical career. Subsequently, he has created an enormous body of jazz and classical work that demonstrates technical mastery and improvisational ability while simultaneously showing a deep understanding of each genre’s traditions.
He has also excelled as a composer, writing jazz and classical works that have established him as a musician of exceptional range. The compositions Think of One and Haydn, Hummel, L. Mozart: Trumpet Concertos won him the 1983 Grammy Awards for Jazz and Classical Music – making him the first musician to receive the awards in both categories in the same year. His 1997 Pulitzer Prize winning composition, Blood on the Fields is a masterpiece of jazz oratorio that tells the story of slavery, reflecting Marsalis’s understanding of the link between music and the human experience that it represents.
Along with a team of passionate advocates, Marsalis established Jazz at Lincoln Center as a constituent part of the Lincoln Center in 1996 – equal in stature to the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet, and the Metropolitan Opera. Now the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School and President of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Marsalis remains a powerful advocate for the importance of music, particularly jazz. He maintains that music education and engagement via performance are key pillars to this endeavor.