Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter, composer, teacher, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted classical and jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammy Awards and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He is the son of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis Jr. (pianist), grandson of Ellis Marsalis Sr., and brother of Branford (saxophonist), Delfeayo (trombonist), and Jason (drummer). Marsalis is the only musician to win a Grammy Award in jazz and classical during the same year.

Early years

Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, though he grew up in Kenner. He is the second of six sons born to Delores Ferdinand and Ellis Marsalis Jr., a pianist and music teacher. He was named for jazz pianist Wynton Kelly. Branford Marsalis is his older brother and Jason Marsalis and Delfeayo Marsalis are younger. All three are jazz musicians. While sitting at a table with trumpeters Al Hirt, Miles Davis, and Clark Terry, his father jokingly suggested that he might as well get Wynton a trumpet, too. Hirt volunteered to give him one, so at the age of six Marsalis received his first trumpet.

Although he owned a trumpet when he was six, he didn't practice much until he was 12. He attended Benjamin Franklin High School and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. He studied classical music at school and jazz at home with his father. He played in funk bands and a marching band led by Danny Barker. He performed on trumpet publicly as the only black musician in the New Orleans Civic Orchestra. After winning a music contest at fourteen, he performed a trumpet concerto by Joseph Haydn with the New Orleans Philharmonic. Two years later he performed Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major by Bach. At seventeen, he was the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood Music Center.

Career

In 1979 he moved to New York City to attend Juilliard. He intended to pursue a career in classical music. In 1980 he toured Europe as a member of the Art Blakey big band, becoming a member of The Jazz Messengers and remaining with Blakey until 1982. He changed his mind about his career and turned to jazz. He has said that years of playing Blakey influenced his decision. He recorded for the first time with Blakey. One year later he went on tour with Herbie Hancock. After signing a contract with Columbia, he recorded his first solo album. In 1982 he established a quartet with his brother Branford, Kenny Kirkland, Charnett Moffett, and Jeff "Tain" Watts. When Branford and Kenny Kirkland left three years later to record and tour with Sting, Marsalis formed another quartet, this time with Marcus Roberts on piano, Robert Hurst on double bass, and Watts on drums. After a while the band expanded to include Wes Anderson, Wycliffe Gordon, Eric Reed, Herlin Riley, Reginald Veal, and Todd Williams.

When asked about influences on his playing style, he cites Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Harry Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Wayne Shorter, Thelonious Monk, Cootie Williams, Ray Nance, Maurice Andre, and Adolph Hofner.

Jazz at Lincoln Center

In 1987, Marsalis helped start the Classical Jazz summer concert series at Lincoln Center in New York City. The success of the series led to Jazz at Lincoln Center becoming a department at Lincoln Center, then to becoming an independent entity in 1996 with organizations such as the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. Marsalis became artistic director of the Center and the musical director of the band, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The orchestra performs at its home venue, Rose Hall, goes on tour, visits schools, appears on radio and television, and produces albums through its label, Blue Engine Records.

In 2011, Marsalis and rock guitarist Eric Clapton performed together in a Jazz at Lincoln Center concert. The concert was recorded and released as the album Play the Blues: Live from Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Other work

In 1995, he hosted the educational program Marsalis on Music on public television, while during the same year National Public Radio broadcast his series Making the Music. Both programs won the George Foster Peabody Award, the highest award given in journalism.

In December 2011, Marsalis was named cultural correspondent for CBS This Morning. He is a member of the CuriosityStream Advisory Board. He serves as director of the Juilliard Jazz Studies program. In 2015, Cornell University appointed him A.D. White Professor-at-Large.

Awards and honors

In 1983, at the age of 22, he became the only musician to win Grammy Awards in jazz and classical music during the same year. At the award ceremonies the next year, he won again in both categories.

After his first album came out in 1982, Marsalis won polls in DownBeat magazine for Musician of the Year, Best Trumpeter, and Album of the Year. In 2017 he was one of the youngest members to be inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame.

In 1997, he became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his oratorio Blood on the Fields. In a note to him, Zarin Mehta wrote, "I was not surprised at your winning the Pulitzer Prize for Blood on the Fields. It is a broad, beautifully painted canvas that impresses and inspires. It speaks to us all...I'm sure that, somewhere in the firmament, Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and legions of others are smiling down on you."

Wynton Marsalis has won the National Medal of Arts, the National Humanities Medal, and been named an NEA Jazz Master.

Approximately seven million copies of his recordings have been sold worldwide. He has toured in 30 countries and on every continent except Antarctica.

He was given the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal and the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement and was dubbed an Honorary Dreamer by the I Have a Dream Foundation. The New York Urban League awarded Marsalis the Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership. The American Arts Council presented him with the Arts Education Award.

He won the Dutch Edison Award and the French Grand Prix du Disque. The Mayor of Vitoria, Spain, gave him the city's Gold Medal, its most coveted distinction. In 1996, Britain's senior conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music, made him an honorary member, the Academy's highest decoration for a non-British citizen. The city of Marciac, France, erected a bronze statue in his honor. The French Ministry of Culture gave him the rank of Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature. In 2008 he received France's highest distinction, the insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

He has received honorary degrees from New York University, Columbia, Harvard, Howard, Northwestern, Princeton, Vermont, and the State University of New York.

Grammy Awards

Best Jazz Instrumental Solo

• Think of One (1983)
• Hot House Flowers (1984)
• Black Codes (From the Underground) (1985)

Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group

• Black Codes (From the Underground) (1985)
• J Mood (1986)
• Marsalis Standard Time, Vol. I (1987)

Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)

• Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis and the National Philharmonic Orchestra for Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat/Leopold Mozart: Trumpet Concerto in D/Hummel: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat (1983)

• Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis and the English Chamber Orchestra for Wynton Marsalis, Edita Gruberova: Handel, Purcell, Torelli, Fasch, Molter (1984)

Best Spoken Word Album for Children

• Listen to the Storytellers (2000)

Criticism

In The Jazz Book, the authors list what Marsalis considers to be the fundamentals of jazz: blues, standards, a swing beat, tonality, harmony, craftsmanship, and mastery of the tradition beginning with New Orleans jazz up to Ornette Coleman. He has little or no respect for free jazz, avant-garde, hip hop, fusion, European, or Asian jazz.

Jazz critic Scott Yanow regards Marsalis as talented but criticized his "selective knowledge of jazz history" and has said that Marsalis considers "post-1965 avant-garde playing to be outside of jazz and 1970s fusion to be barren" to be the unfortunate result of the "somewhat eccentric beliefs of Stanley Crouch". In The New York Times in 1997, pianist Keith Jarrett said Marsalis "imitates other people's styles too well...His music sounds like a high school trumpet player to me".

Bassist Stanley Clarke said, "All the guys that are criticizing—like Wynton Marsalis and those guys—I would hate to be around to hear those guys playing on top of a groove!" But Clarke also said, "These things I've said about Wynton are my criticism of him, but the positive things I have to say about him outweigh the negative. He has brought respectability back to jazz."

When he met Miles Davis, one of his idols, Davis said, "So here's the police..." For his part, Marsalis compared Miles Davis's embrace of pop music to "a general who has betrayed his country." He called rap "hormone driven pop music" and said that hip hop "reinforces destructive behavior at home and influences the world's view of the Afro American in a decidedly negative direction."

Marsalis responded to criticism by saying, "You can't enter a battle and expect not to get hurt." He said that losing the freedom to criticize is "to accept mob rule, it is a step back towards slavery."

Discography

Books

• Sweet Swing Blues on the Road with Frank Stewart (1994)
• Marsalis on Music (1995)
• Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life with Carl Vigeland (2002)
• To a Young Jazz Musician: Letters from the Road with Selwyn Seyfu Hinds (2004)
• Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits with Paul Rogers (2007)
• Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life with Geoffrey Ward (2008)
• Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!: A Sonic Adventure with Paul Rogers (2012)

Bibliography

• Le Fabuleux Destin de Marciac (Editions Un autre Reg'art, 2014): a reference book about the French city of Marciac, the "Jazz in Marciac" festival and the key role played by Wynton Marsalis in the story of this festival