Wynton Marsalis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wynton Marsalis
Background information
Birth name	Wynton Learson Marsalis
Born	October 18, 1961 (1961-10-18) (age 47) New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Genre(s)	Classical, Jazz
Occupation(s)	Composer, Trumpeter
Instrument(s)	Trumpet
Years active	1980–present
Label(s)	Columbia, Sony
Associated acts	English Chamber Orchestra, Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra
Website	www.WyntonMarsalis.com

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter and composer. He is among the most prominent jazz musicians of the modern era and is also a well-known instrumentalist in classical music. He is also the Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. A compilation of his series of inspirational letters to a young jazz musical student, named Anthony, has been published as To a Young Jazz Musician.

Marsalis has made his reputation with a combination of skill in jazz performance and composition, a sophisticated yet earthy and hip personal style, an impressive knowledge of jazz and jazz history, and skill as a virtuoso classical trumpeter. As of 2006, he has made sixteen classical and more than thirty jazz recordings, has been awarded nine Grammys between the genres, and has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first time it has been awarded for a jazz recording.

[edit] Biography

Wynton Marsalis has been described as the most outstanding jazz musician and trumpeter of his generation, as one of the world’s top classical trumpeters, as a big band leader in the tradition of Duke Ellington, a brilliant composer, a devoted advocate for the Arts and a tireless and inspiring educator. He carries these distinctions well. His life is a portrait of discipline, dedication, sacrifice, and creative accomplishment.

The sound of Wynton Marsalis’ band is inspired by the basic principals of democracy. According to Marsalis, what you hear in a great jazz band is the sound of democracy. “The jazz band works best when participation is shaped by intelligent communication.” This intelligent, hard swinging interplay has made Marsalis’ bands the favorite among jazz musicians and audiences worldwide. In the smallest of towns Wynton is received warmly and enthusiastically. The connection is the music, which mimics our valued way of life. Through jazz music Wynton Marsalis represents America all over the world. In such disparate locations from Prague to Warsaw, Seoul to Wellington, Paris to Istanbul, Santiago to Mexico City, Toronto to Calgary, Amarillo to Portland - you will find Wynton Marsalis sharing his vision of the union of jazz and democracy.

Wynton was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 18, 1961 to Ellis and Dolores Marsalis. He was the second of six sons, one of whom is autistic. At an early age Wynton exhibited seriousness about study, an aptitude for music and a desire to contribute to American culture. At age 8 he performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by legendary banjoist, Danny Barker. At 14 he was invited to perform with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high school Wynton was a member of the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony and on weekends he performed in a jazz band as well as in the popular local funk band, the Creators. At age 17 Wynton became the youngest musician ever to be admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center. Despite his youth, he was awarded the school’s prestigious Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. When Wynton moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979 and began to pick up gigs around town, the grapevine began to buzz. The following year (1980 ) he was rewarded with the opportunity to join the Jazz Messengers to study under master drummer and bandleader, Art Blakey. It was in Art Blakey’s band that Wynton learned the relationship between jazz and democracy. Art Blakey would always say, “No America, no jazz!” It was from Blakey that Wynton acquired his concept for bandleading and for bringing intensity to each and every performance. In the years to follow Wynton was invited to perform with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins, and countless other jazz legends.

With this foundation Wynton assembled his own band and hit the road, performing over 120 concerts every year for ten consecutive years. His objective was to learn how to play and to comprehend how best to give to his audience. During these years Wynton’s strong belief in jazz and his vision for the music revitalized the art form. Through an exhaustive series of performances, lectures and music workshops Marsalis rekindled widespread interest in an art form that had been largely abandoned and redefined out of its artistic substance. Marsalis invested his creative energy in the art of jazz and would not be compromised by financial opportunity or critical pressure. Additionally, he garnered recognition for the older generation of jazz musicians and prompted the re-issuance of jazz catalog by record companies worldwide. A quick glance at the better known jazz musicians today reveals many students of Marsalis’ workshops: James Carter, Christian McBride, Roy Hargrove, Harry Connick, Jr., Nicholas Payton, and Eric Reed to name a few.

Not content to focus solely on his musicianship, Wynton devoted equal time to developing his compositional skills. The dance community quickly embraced his penmanship and he received commissions to create major compositions for Garth Fagan Dance, Peter Martins at the New York City Ballet, Twyla Tharp for the American Ballet Theatre, and for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Marsalis collaborated with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in 1995 to compose the string quartet, At the Octoroon Balls, and again in 1998 to create a response to Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale with his composition, A Fiddler’s Tale. At the dawn of the new millennium Wynton presented his most ambitious work to date, All Rise, an epic composition for big band, gospel choir, and symphony orchestra which was performed by the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Kurt Masur along with the Morgan State University Choir and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (December 1999).

Wynton’s love of the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and others drove him to pursue a career in classical music as well. He recorded the Haydn, Hummel and Leopold Mozart trumpet concertos at the age of twenty. His debut recording received glorious reviews and won the Grammy Award for “Best Classical Soloist with an Orchestra.” Marsalis went on to record ten additional classical records, all to critical acclaim. Wynton performed with leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, Cleveland Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, English Chamber Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and London’s Royal Philharmonic, working with an eminent group of conductors including: Leppard, Dutoit, Maazel, Slatkin, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Tilson-Thomas. Through his recordings, workshops and performances Wynton inspired many youngsters to pursue classical music as well. Famed classical trumpeter Maurice André praised Wynton as “potentially the greatest trumpeter of all time.”

In 1987 Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. The first season consisted of three concerts. Under Wynton’s leadership the program has developed an international agenda with up to 400 events annually in 15 countries. The programming is rich and diverse and includes performances, debates, film forums, dances, television and radio broadcasts, and educational activities. Educational activities include an annual High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival that reaches over 2000 bands in 50 states and Canada, a Band Director’s Academy, and a hugely popular concert series for kids called “Jazz For Young People.” In December of 1995 the Lincoln Center Board awarded the Jazz Department’s significant success by voting it a full constituent, equal in stature with the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City Ballet - a historic moment for Jazz as an art form and for Lincoln Center as a cultural institution. In February 1998 New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani announced that Jazz at Lincoln Center was selected to be part of the redevelopment of the New York Coliseum site at Columbus Circle. Frederick P. Rose Hall (opened in October 2004), has become Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new home, and contains state-of-the-art performance, recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities as well as the world’s first concert hall built specifically for jazz.

In the fall of 1995 Wynton launched two major broadcast events. In October PBS premiered a series of educational television shows on jazz and classical music. The series was written and hosted by Marsalis and was enjoyed by millions of parents and children. Writers distinguished Marsalis’ television series by comparing his work to that of the late Leonard Bernstein in his celebrated Young People’s Concerts of the 50s & 60s. That same month National Public Radio began broadcasting the first of Marsalis’ 26-week series entitled Making the Music. These entertaining and insightful radio shows were the first full exposition of jazz music in American broadcast history. Wynton’s radio and television series were awarded the most prestigious distinction in broadcast journalism, the George Foster Peabody Award (1995). While this body of work is enough to fill two lifetimes, Wynton Marsalis continues to work as hard as ever to earn the privilege to contribute even more to our world’s cultural landscape.

Wynton Marsalis has won nine of the coveted Grammy Awards. In 1983 he earned the distinction of being the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical records - (an accomplishment he astonishingly repeated in 1984) and he is the only artist ever to have won Grammy Awards in five consecutive years (1983-1987). Wynton was awarded the Grand Prix Du Disque of France, the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal, the Netherlands’ Edison Award and the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts (1997). He received countless plaques and was given the Key to over 50 cities. He was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement and was dubbed an Honorary Dreamer by the “I Have a Dream Foundation.” Wynton received a citation from the United States House of Representatives for his outstanding contributions to the Arts. Time magazine selected Wynton as one of America’s most promising leaders under age 40 in 1995, and in 1996 Time celebrated Marsalis as one of America’s 25 Most Influential People. In the spring of 2001 United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan proclaimed Wynton Marsalis an international ambassador of goodwill by appointing him a U N Messenger of Peace. In November 2005 Wynton Marsalis was awarded The National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States Government. If you speak with Wynton, however, he will tell you that his greatest reward is the love and support that he receives from people all over the world from his twenty plus years of uninterrupted touring.

Honorary degrees have been conferred upon Wynton by twenty-nine of our nation’s leading academic institutions including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale University. Elsewhere, the New York Urban League awarded Wynton with the Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership, the American Arts Council presented him with the Arts Education Award and Britain’s senior conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music, granted Mr. Marsalis Honorary Membership, the Academy’s highest decoration for a non-British citizen (1996). The French Ministry of Culture appointed Wynton the most prestigious decoration awarded by the French Republic - the rank of Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature. In 1997 Wynton Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio Blood on the Fields. During the five decades prior, the Pulitzer Prize jury refused to recognize jazz musicians and their improvisational music, reserving this distinction for classical composers. In a personal note to Wynton, 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.”

The most extraordinary dimension of Wynton Marsalis, however, is not his accomplishments but his character. It is the lesser-known but much appreciated part of this man who finds endless ways to give of himself. It is the person who waited in a dark and empty parking lot for one full hour after a concert in Baltimore, waiting for a single student to return from home with his horn for a trumpet lesson; it is the citizen who personally funds scholarships for students attending the Tanglewood Music Center and the Eastern Music Festival. Wynton Marsalis has selflessly donated his time and talent to non-profit organizations throughout the country to help raise money to meet the many needs within our society. From My Sister’s Place (a shelter for battered women) to Graham Windham (a shelter for homeless children), the Children’s Defense Fund, Amnesty International, the Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, Food For All Seasons (a food bank for the elderly and disadvantaged), Very Special Arts (an organization that provides experiences in dance, drama, literature, and music for individuals with physical and mental disabilities) to the Newark Boys Chorus School ( a full-time academic music school for disadvantaged youths) and many, many more -- Wynton responded enthusiastically to the call for service. Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, Wynton Marsalis organized the Higher Ground Hurricane Relief concert (produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center) which raised and distributed over $3M to musicians and cultural organizations impacted by the hurricane. At the same time, he assumed a leadership role on the Bring Back New Orleans Cultural Commission where he was instrumental in helping to shape a master plan that would revitalize the city’s cultural base. Wynton has since been a tireless advocate for Hurricane Katrina survivors and for marshalling the will and resources necessary to rebuild New Orleans culturally, socially and economically. It is Wynton’s commitment to the improvement of life for all people as well as his outstanding contributions to the Arts that portray the best of his character and humanity.

Wynton Marsalis has been appropriately described as a level raiser whose breadth of talent is equated with genius. It has been said that he is an American musician for whom greatness is not merely possible but inevitable. To date Wynton has produced over 60 records and has sold over 7 million records worldwide including 3 Gold Records. With his collection of standards he reinvigorated the jazz musician’s relationship to the American popular song. With The Majesty Of The Blues, Wynton re-introduced America to the joy in New Orleans Jazz. In Levee Low Moan, Thick In The South and other blues recordings, Wynton extended the jazz musician’s interplay with the blues. With Citi Movement, In This House on This Morning, Blood on the Fields and All Rise he invented a fresh conception for extended form compositions. His inventive interplay with melody, harmony, and rhythm – his lyrical voicing and tonal coloring assert new possibilities for the jazz ensemble and extend the vocabulary of jazz. In his epic oratorio Blood on the Fields, Wynton draws upon the blues, work songs, chants, call & response, spirituals, New Orleans jazz, Ellingtonesque orchestral arrangements, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and he created Greek chorus-style recitations to move the work along. The New York Times Magazine said the work “marked the symbolic moment when the full heritage of the line, Ellington through Mingus, was extended into the present.” The San Francisco Examiner stated “Marsalis’ orchestral arrangements are magnificent. Duke Ellington’s shadings and themes come and go but Marsalis’ free use of dissonance, counter rhythms and polyphonics is way ahead of Ellington’s mid-century era.”

[edit] Musical accomplishments

As a composer and performer, Marsalis is also represented on a quartet of Sony Classical releases, At the Octoroon Balls: String Quartet No. 1, A Fiddler's Tale, Reel Time and Sweet Release and Ghost Story: Two More Ballets by Wynton Marsalis. All are volumes of an eight-CD series, titled Swinging Into The 21st, that is an unprecedented set of albums released in the past year featuring a remarkable scope of original compositions and standards, from jazz to classical to ballet, by composers from Jelly Roll Morton to Igor Stravinsky to Thelonious Monk, in addition to Marsalis. Marsalis will also compose new cadenzas for violinist, Anne Akiko Meyers, in Mozart's Concerto in G Major, #3.

At the Octoroon Balls features the world-premiere recording of Marsalis's first string quartet, performed by the Orion Quartet. The work was commissioned by Lincoln Center, and its premiere by the Orion Quartet in 1995 was presented in conjunction with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. It has subsequently been recorded by the Harlem Quartet. A Fiddler's Tale, also commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for Marsalis/Stravinsky, a joint project of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Jazz At Lincoln Center, is work with narration about a musician who sells her soul to a record producer. It was premiered on April 23, 1998, at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A version without narration was included on the album At the Octoroon Balls: String Quartet No. 1. Reeltime is Marsalis's score for the acclaimed John Singleton film Rosewood. This original music, featuring vocal performances by best-selling artists Cassandra Wilson and Shirley Caesar, was never used in the film. Marsalis also provided the score for the 1990 film Tune in Tomorrow, in which he also makes a cameo appearance as a New Orleans trumpeter with his band. Sweet Release and Ghost Story offers another world premiere recording of two original ballet scores by Marsalis, written for and premiered by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Zhong Mei Dance Company, both in New York City.

As an exclusive classical artist for Sony Classical, Marsalis has won critical acclaim for the recording In Gabriel's Garden (SK/ST 66244), featuring Baroque music for trumpet and orchestra. It includes performances of the Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 and Mouret: Rondeau, a video of which has been adopted as the new theme for PBS Masterpiece Theatre. The San Francisco Examiner wrote, "Marsalis continues to define great music making…[the pieces] are all articulated with dazzling clarity and enthusiasm."^{[citation needed]} The album features the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Newman, and was produced by Steven Epstein.

[edit] Criticism

Marsalis's strongly held views regarding the roots of jazz and its development have generated some negative appraisals from jazz critics and fellow musicians. Down Beat magazine's website says of Marsalis:

For many, Wynton Marsalis saved pure jazz from a morass of pop fusion and noise. Others contend that the trumpeter instilled a regressive notion of the jazz tradition. This debate, not to mention his instrumental proficiency and compositional ambition, has made him one of the most prominent and controversial jazz musicians of the 1980s and 1990s.

Critic Scott Yanow praises Marsalis's talent, but has questioned his "selective knowledge of jazz history considering post-1965 avant-garde playing to be outside of jazz and 1970s fusion to be barren."^[1] Trumpeter Lester Bowie opined of Marsalis's traditionalism, "If you retread what's gone before, even if it sounds like jazz, it could be anathema to the spirit of jazz."^[2] In his 1997 book Blue: The Murder of Jazz Eric Nisenson argues that Marsalis's focus on a narrow portion of jazz's past is stifling the music's growth and preventing any further innovation.^[3]

Pierre Sprey, president of jazz record company Mapleshade Records, declares that "When Marsalis was nineteen, he was a fine jazz trumpeter ... But he was getting his tail beat off every night in Art Blakey's band. I don't think he could keep up. And finally he retreated to safe waters. He's a good classical trumpeter and thus he sees jazz as being a classical Music. He has no clue what's going on now."^[4]

From nearly the beginning of Marsalis' career, he occasionally butted heads with trumpeter Miles Davis, one of the leading names in jazz since the '40s. In his autobiography^[5] Davis expressed disapproval of the heavy promotion afforded Marsalis by Columbia Records' George Butler, citing it as a factor in his leaving the record label after four decades. Additionally, Davis described Marsalis as good trumpeter and "a nice young man, only confused" due to what Davis saw as his being over-praised by traditionalist jazz critics:

[edit] Ken Burns's Jazz

Marsalis has also been criticized for his role in the Ken Burns documentary Jazz, which promoted a classicist view of jazz similar to the views of Marsalis himself. The documentary focused primarily on Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong among others, while failing to mention jazz artists from the period Marsalis views as barren.

The documentary also angered many with subjective statements, often from Marsalis, about the comparative complexity, popularity, and general worth of the music of a wide variety of artists.

As artistic director and co-producer of the project, Marsalis bore the brunt of the criticism of the nonetheless highly acclaimed series, which to many embodied the exclusive, classicist view of jazz for which Marsalis is known. Critic David Adler has suggested this production role was a clear conflict of interest with his high onscreen profile: "Wynton's coronation in the film is not merely biased. It is not just aesthetically grating. It is unethical, given his integral role in the making of the very film that is praising him to the heavens."^[6]

[edit] Political activism

[edit] New Orleans

Marsalis emerged as one of the most notable New Orleans civic leaders in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a number of public speeches and television ads, he tried to increase public awareness of the importance of rebuilding New Orleans. Marsalis also urged people to visit Louisiana as soon as possible.

Marsalis organized a large benefit at Jazz at Lincoln Center for musicians and other New Orleaneans affected by Hurricane Katrina. The benefit, called Higher Ground, featured many famous musicians, both traditional and contemporary, such as Cassandra Wilson, Diana Krall, Dianne Reeves, Norah Jones, Victor Goines, Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner and in 2007 R&B star, Fantasia.

Marsalis was one of the participants in Movie Director Spike Lee's documentary When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts.

In the New Orleans mayoral campaign of 2006, Marsalis endorsed Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu over mayor Ray Nagin. Both candidates were Democratic party members. Nagin was reelected on the second ballot runoff.

[edit] International politics

Marsalis has helped raise awareness of Aung San Suu Kyi and human rights violations in Burma through concerts working with the Freedom Campaign and the US Campaign for Burma. Past music events have also included R.E.M., Damien Rice, and the the Black Eyed Peas.

[edit] Awards and recognition

Statue dedicated to W. Marsalis in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

Marsalis has been awarded the 2005 National Medal of Arts of the United States, the Grand Prix du Disque of the Charles Cros Academy and the Edison Award of the Netherlands, and was elected an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in Britain. He has received several honorary doctoral degrees, and a variety of other recognitions from Brandeis University, Brown University, Columbia University, Denison University, Haverford College, Johns Hopkins University, the Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Northwestern University, Princeton University, the University of Miami, Southern Methodist University(SMU) and Yale University.^[7]

Marsalis has toured 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica, and nearly five million copies of his recordings have been sold worldwide. As of 2006, United Artists is considering releasing a feature film biopic on Marsalis, with Will Smith widely purported to be in consideration for the role.

[edit] Accolades

• Johns Hopkins University - George Peabody Medal
• Northwestern University - Honorary Doctor of Arts
• Royal Academy of Music - Honorary Member
• Teachers College, Columbia University - Medal for Distinguished Service
• Southern Methodist University(SMU) - Algur H. Meadows Award For Excellence in the Arts^[8]

[edit] Music Awards

Pulitzer Prize for Music

• 1997 Blood on the Fields, oratorio

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group

• 1985 Black Codes From the Underground
• 1985 J Mood
• 1985 Marsalis Standard Time - Volume I

Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)

• 1983 Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis & the National Philharmonic Orchestra for Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat/L. Mozart: Trumpet Concerto In D/Hummel: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat
• 1984 Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis & the English Chamber Orchestra for Wynton Marsalis, Edita Gruberova: Handel, Purcell, Torelli, Fasch, Molter

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo

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

Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children

• 2000 Listen to the Storyteller

[edit] Discography

[edit] References

• The Music of Black Americans: A History. Eileen Southern. W. W. Norton & Company; 3rd edition. ISBN 0-393-97141-4

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Wynton Marsalis

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wynton Marsalis

• Wynton Marsalis Official website
• Wynton Marsalis at the Sony website
• Wynton Marsalis jazz instruction
• Wynton Marsalis at the Lincoln Center
• Wynton Marsalis at the Internet Movie Database
• Wynton Marsalis post Katrina Tulane University Speech
• 2002 feature by Tom Meek, The Gainesville Sun.
• Bio and photo of Wynton Marsalis — Crain's New York Business 40 under 40 — 1998
• USA Today Q&A
• "Wynton Marsalis: 12 Essential Recordings" by Ted Gioia (Jazz.com)