Check out this exclusive BBC interview by Leo Hornak, who went behind the scenes with Wynton and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as they got ready for the European premiere of The Democracy! Suite last March.

Listen now on BBC

The 2025–’26 season also features tour dates worldwide by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in collaboration with noted guest artists and appearances by major figures in jazz and related genres.

Dominating Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 38th season are concerts that explore the deep and enduring ties between jazz, the African continent and its diaspora, a leitmotif that the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis previously addressed in such past Marsalis opuses as Blood On The Fields (1996), Congo Square (2007), Ochas (2014) and the fresh big band arrangements comprising JLCO’s The South African Songbook concert (2019). The season highlights new works, commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center, from jazz artists in the organization’s new The Commission Series. The new season also includes celebratory concerts to honor the centennials of three towering figures in jazz — Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson and Celia Cruz — further illuminating the far-reaching legacy of Afro-American and the African diaspora musical expression.

“The earliest and most fundamental human mythology is African,” JALC’s Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis said. “From Venda to Igbo to a host of other belief systems across the continent, there are viable solutions to today’s challenges.”

Several of the performances on the season address the creative sensibilities that enslaved Africans applied in embedding the rhythms, timbres and melodies from their religious-cultural traditions into the DNA of Black American Music — Negro spirituals, the blues and early jazz — in the United States. Another cohort of concerts home in on the Afro-diasporic vernacular and popular musical genres that evolved in the Caribbean, Central American and South American diasporas and permeated jazz expression from early 20th century New Orleans origins through the first quarter of the 21st century. Others focus on the African consciousness of such modern North American jazz masters as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Randy Weston, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus and Horace Silver, and the musical production of African jazz musicians after 1945, when the African nations were established and the United Nations was formed.

“Our ancestors had cogent and powerful thoughts on who we are as individuals as we pass through the natural cycles of life, how we should relate to one another socially, and how to be one with the universal spirit that inhabits all,” Marsalis said. “In their globally influential music and dance concepts, we can perceive how to find harmony and balance with nature, how to perceive and interact with the supernatural, and how to create endless variations on fundamental themes in pursuit of a good time.”

View full details of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2025–’26 season concert schedule

Wynton Marsalis, globally revered trumpeter, composer, educator, and champion of jazz, brought his signature brilliance to the stage alongside a powerhouse ensemble. From beloved jazz standards to rare historic gems and newly commissioned works, the evening was a dynamic journey through the genre’s deep and diverse legacy.

The orchestra, featuring a stellar lineup including Philadelphia native Joe Block on piano providing some stellar runs on the 88’s, delivered breathtaking arrangements of classics by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Charles Mingus, to name just a few. Their interpretations were bold, elegant, and bursting with soul—showcasing the precision, swing, and expressive power that Marsalis and his orchestra are known for worldwide.

A highlight of the night was Marsalis’s moving tribute to mentorship and youth. Known for his deep commitment to nurturing the next generation, he praised the importance of passing the torch: “Part of the continuum of our music is standing on the shoulders of those before us, while recognizing the brilliance of younger musicians.” He also gave special recognition to Mr. Lovett Hines of the Philadelphia Clef Club, honoring his decades-long dedication to teaching and inspiring young jazz talent in the city.

The setlist was both powerful and poignant. The orchestra’s rendition of John Coltrane’s “Alabama” was hauntingly beautiful, while “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” (featuring warm, witty vocals from trombonist Vincent Gardner) brought the crowd to life. The finale, “Up From Down,” a Gardner original, earned a well-deserved standing ovation.

Marsalis also delighted the audience with personal stories—like performing in Spain at a soulful ice-skating rink arena where he debuted his vibrant “Medearaza Swing.” His humor and heart added another layer of connection between the music and the audience.

For the encore, the orchestra brought the house down with a stunning rendition of the spiritual “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho,” sending the audience home with full hearts and rhythmic feet.

The evening was more than a concert—it was a gift, a celebration of fatherhood, mentorship, and the enduring power of Jazz. Wynton Marsalis continues not only to preserve the genre but to expand it, inspire with it, and pass it on.

Source: ThisisRnB.com

“I liked him right away,” Marsalis effused, “because he could name all the members of Buddy Bolden’s band.” Bolden is the enigmatic legend of early New Orleans jazz, considered a pioneering force in the birth of jazz as we know it, but who never recorded and spent his later years in a psychiatric facility. Pritzker ended up directing the biopic Bolden in 2019, an interesting but flawed film, with a chronologically circular and dizzy structure.

But LOUIS, a kind of “prequel” biopic about the childhood of Armstrong, came first. The unique end result, which premiered in 2010 and had its West Coast premiere at the Arlington Theatre on Saturday (hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures), is a contemporary silent film in which the musical component is very much live, alive and kicking and riffing in real time. Watching the film in streaming mode only goes so far: As experienced at the Arlington, the full effect is exponentially more engaging with Marsalis and his 13-piece big band onstage and in the shiver-some moment.

It makes perfect sense that both Pritzker and Marsalis would rally around the subject, and the seminal era in jazz. Over the course of 40-ish years, Marsalis has expressed his deep love for and preservationist’s advocacy for jazz of the pre-mid-1960s sort, with special reverence for Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Not incidentally, in LOUIS, Marsalis’s powerful and pitch-perfect trumpet work often stole the show and our sensory attentions and affections.

Pritzker’s obsession with silent film is funneled into a project which adheres to tropes and tics of the silent genre/era, using overly copious degrees of melodrama (including an arch villain resembling Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator), slapstick shtick, and iris shots galore.

The film doesn’t shy away from the sordid environment Armstrong grew up around, in the red light “Storyville” district of New Orleans, reputedly the very seedbed of jazz’s birthing process.

From a more contemporary perspective, LOUIS may be the raciest silent film to date, but for a logical contextual reason. Breasts are bared, hedonistic abandon is afoot in the “house,” business transpires upstairs, and a key dance sequence oozes with sensual sex work excess while the band plays on and Marsalis issues muted trumpet shouts.

One intriguing footnote with the film is the all-important visualization of the famed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, in one of his last projects before his 2016 death. His deft and roaming camerawork gives the film an admirable sheen and shimmer. A clever cameo footnote finds Zsigmond in the brief role as a still photographer who is brusquely kicked out of the room by our resident arch villain character Judge Perry.

At some points, we drift away from the filmic dimension and get lost in the music onstage, an amalgam of original material and rearranged music by Armstrong, Ellington, and Jelly Roll Morton, and the dazzling jazz-cum-classical piano interludes of Gottschalk, courtesy of Licad’s limber virtuosity.

In this latest of many Marsalis performances in Santa Barbara (watch for the return of his brilliant Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra next February), the filmic context represented a valiant new twist on the ongoing agenda of shedding light on jazz historical loam. A highlight of the night at the Arlington actually came in the pre-screening performance by the band, and as it stretched out during and after the end credits. It’s always a pleasure to hear Marsalis and his top-notch allies in action, in any setting.

A special shoutout goes to a new member of Marsalis’s Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra clan, potently gifted saxophonist/clarinetist/flutist Alexa Tarantino — who replaces the departing Ted Nash as the first female musician in the ranks, a long-awaited gender-leveling gesture. Tarantino made a powerful impact with her imaginative and spidery alto sax solo at evening’s end. Louis would approve.

By Josef Woodard
Source: Santa Barbara Independent

The 2010 feature by director Dan Pritzker imagines the early life of pioneering trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong, and boasts such acting talent as Anthony Mackie (“Captain America: Brave New World”) and Jackie Earle Haley (2009’s “Watchmen”).

But Marsalis is the main attraction of an upcoming West Coast concert tour of the film, which kicks off this month. It makes a stop at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland on Saturday, May 24, presented by SFJazz. Local fans can also catch it the following night at Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. He and an 11-piece band plan to perform his original music plus a few jazz standards, while classical pianist Cecile Licad has been tapped to play solo works by 19th century American virtuoso Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

“In the 1990s, I took my mom to see ‘City Lights,’ (Charlie) Chaplin’s movie, with the Chicago Symphony playing the score, and it just blew me away,” recalled the filmmaker, who grew up in Chicago and is an heir of the Pritzker family, known for their ownership of Hyatt Hotels. “I had seen silent films and always liked them, but I was not a buff.

“So I decided I was going to do this the right way. I wrote (a) script based on the story of a boy in New Orleans in the early 1900s who wants to play trumpet, and then I started really watching silent films, maybe two or three a day, for years.”

A Marin County resident for more than two decades, Pritzker first made his mark on popular culture as leader of the 1990s alternative rock and soul band Sonia Dada. But it was his deep knowledge of Armstrong and another seminal horn player, Buddy Bolden, that impressed Marsalis. This expertise was key to the director successfully recruiting Marsalis in 2005 over a seafood dinner in New York to score “Louis” and also “Bolden,” a more traditional color feature that was filmed concurrently but not released until 2019.

“It’s the only time I’ve ever met with a person who wasn’t a historian who had that level of understanding,” Marsalis told the Chronicle by phone from his home in New York City, where he serves as managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Soon after that dinner, Marsalis delved into the meticulous process for putting together the “Louis” score.

“All of it is composed — even ‘improvised’ parts,” he said in explaining how the project is uniquely “through-composed,” meaning every note of it is written.

He added that for the live performances, Andy Faber, a frequent collaborator with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, conducts to a click track.

JLCO mainstays like alto saxophonist Alexa Tarantino and bassist Carlos Henriquez, as well as other notables like baritone saxophonist James Carter and drummer Jason Marsalis, the trumpeter’s youngest brother, are among the 11 members of the live ensemble.

Licad anchors the other end of the score. Born in Manila, Philippines, and trained at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, she was introduced to the works of New Orleans native Gottschalk in 2000.

“He was snubbed a lot by East Coast people who didn’t take him seriously at the time, but he was just so incredible,” she said by phone from her Manhattan home.

That admiration comes through in Licad’s performances, according to Pritzker.

“As I was researching Gottschalk, arguably the first American piano virtuoso, I started listening to current players of his music,” he said. “I thought Cecile was the best person playing that material.”

That lasting impression had everything to do with Licad hitting on the right interpretation. “She’s also Chopin-esque, like he was,” Pritzker said, referencing Frédéric Chopin, the Romantic-era composer and pianist. “Other players were playing it more in a Scott Joplin style with no dynamics.”

While she’d never embarked on such a project, her grand-uncle, Francisco Buencamino, was a pianist who wrote scores for Filipino silent films, so she said there was a feeling of familiarity. But when Licad joined the team in the mid-2000s, she was wholly unaware she’d also be collaborating with Marsalis.

As it turned out, Licad and Marsalis weren’t exactly strangers.

“Cecile and I were signed to CBS Masterworks around the same time in the early 1980s, when we were in our late teens, early 20s,” the trumpeter revealed.

“We went to a concert together to hear (conductor) Claudio Abbado, and we ate dinner together with Claudio too,” Licad added. “Wynton was wearing this really shiny suit, and I’d never seen anyone so young and so confident. I was very shy socially — very much the opposite.”

Since then, Marsalis’ projects, from quartets to a big band, have left an indelible mark on generations of musicians and educators. Combined with initiatives like the Lincoln Center’s WeBop program, which introduces children as young as 8 months to the art form, and its comprehensive collegiate curriculum, he has particularly become a defining voice for jazz education and advocacy.

Yet, even with an accomplished career spanning more than 40 years, the Grammy-winning trumpeter is keenly aware of the opportunities that remain.

“There’s more types of gravity than physical,” he reflected. “And you just start to understand what can be done with the amount of time you have.”

This understanding fuels his creative drive. In addition to his early compositional career writing pieces firmly rooted in jazz forms, Marsalis’ output in recent decades has extended to the classical world. His new Concerto for Orchestra is slated to receive its U.S. premiere from the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in September. He’s also currently working on a cello concerto and his Fifth Symphony.

“That’s the fun of being in a field like music, where you don’t time-out,” the 63-year-old said. “If you’re an athlete, at a certain point you can’t play anymore. But in music, you can play.”

by Yoshi Kato
Suurce: San Francisco Chronicle

The trumpeter and composer admits that, as a young teenage musician, like many of his age, he wasn’t a fan of Armstrong.

“I grew up in the civil rights movement,” said Marsalis. “We didn’t like his [style of] talking, singing, and all that. He seemed like he was from the minstrel era. But also, we didn’t listen to his music. We didn’t actually know who he was.”

Marsalis said the Armstrong hit song Jubilee helped change his mind about the legend.

“My father (who was a well-known musician) knew a lot about the history, and taught it,” said Marsalis.

“When I moved to New York (to study music), I was 17. He sent me a tape and said, ‘learn some of these solos.’ That night, I’ll never forget, I started with a song called Jubilee. [It] was so complex I couldn’t play it. It gave me instantly another level of understanding and respect. After that, I got into his music.”

In 2006, Marsalis brought together some of the biggest names in contemporary jazz to record a version of the classic 1920s Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens collection.

“It was more like a modern take using his orchestration concepts, to do it the way we would do it,” Marsalis said. “It would be interesting to listen to what we did in relation to the way they did it.”

Now, the 90-minute silent film Louis, accompanied by a live jazz ensemble, brings Armstrong to life again in a different way.

The movie, directed by Dan Pritzker, is loosely based on Armstrong’s childhood. Pianist Cecile Licad and an 11-piece all-star jazz ensemble accompany Marsalis.

He said one of the special things about the project is that as it tours, it’s always different. It’s live jazz, and they’re always improvising.

“They’re going to hear authentic music from a time period that they haven’t heard,” said Marsalis. “We bring these historical things together. It’s very unusual.”

UC Santa Barbara Arts and Lectures presents Louis Saturday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m. at Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theater.

By Lance Orozco
Source: KCLU Radio

Marsalis will play a score comprising primarily his own compositions with a 13-member jazz ensemble while Licad will play the music of 19th century American composer L.M. Gottschalk.

Marsalis spoke with The Arizona Republic about his involvement in the movie, which grew out of a conversation with filmmaker Dan Pritzker about American cornetist Buddy Bolden, a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of ragtime music that became what we now know as jazz.

Here’s what he had to say.

How Wynton Marsalis got involved in the silent film ‘Louis’

How did you come to get involved in this “Louis” project?

(Pritzker) was talking about making a film on Buddy Bolden. Well, it was the first time in my life I had ever been approached to do anything about Bolden, and just sitting down with him, he knew all the people in the bands and had a sense of the connection to American history of that time.

So the original talks were about Buddy Bolden, and then the silent film came after that. And that was just a kind of mythic, nonfactual thing that dealt with life in New Orleans around Louis Armstrong’s time with little Pops as a character from a mythological standpoint.

All of these were Dan’s ideas. He had seen a Charlie Chaplin film with the Chicago Symphony backing the film and he thought it would be a good idea to do a contemporary silent film.

What was the appeal of the project to you?

Well, one was to recreate Bolden’s style for me as a trumpet player, because I had always heard that he played less than the people who came after him, you know? And I always thought that was kind of curious, because most of the people, the people who invent styles, always played much better than the ones who followed them.

If you take Charlie Parker, he played his style better than anybody who played it. You take the style Louis Armstrong invented, many trumpet players came out of his style, but his style was the prototype. Generally, the prototypical style is an amalgamation of all the styles that came before it.

If you take what Beethoven combined to follow Haydn, and then, even though he wasn’t trained in that when he was younger, as a much older man, he began to try to write fugues and other things that were much more the provenance of Bach in the earlier era.

I just feel in the arts, that’s just how it always works. The person who brings together the styles influences other people with aspects of their personality, and then eventually another person comes that amalgamates all those styles. So I was really interested in that.

And with the silent film, he was talking about Gottschalk and that kind of New Orleans music — piano music, parlor music. I thought that was a good idea. And once again, I mean, how many times you ever talk to anyone about Gottschalk’s music? In my life, that’s maybe one of two conversations I’ve had. And I’m not a spring chicken, you know what I mean?

And the piano player he wanted to play with was Cecile Licad, and just ironically, she and I were signed to CBS Masterworks at the same time when we were young people. In 1982, ’83, we were 21, 20 years old. So I was very familiar with Cecile, because we had the same product manager, Miss Christine Reed. So I knew all of Cecile’s early records and had heard a lot about Cecile from Christine.

I thought, What’s the chances of this, 20-something years later, to meet somebody talking about Gottschalk, Louis Armstrong, Buddy Bolden’s band and knows Cecile. So you know, yeah, I had to say yes to it.

And when you play in Chandler, you’re providing the score live?

We play the score live, yeah, with a click track (a metronome, used to keep the live performance synced up with the film). A lot of the music is written, but some of it is improvised, too. Andy Farber is the conductor, the same conductor we had originally.

I was wondering how much would be improvised.

Well, you figure, the rhythm section is improvising almost all the time. I would say 50% of it, probably? Fifty-five? But we have a click track, and we have to stay on cue.

Building the score for a silent film about young Louis Armstrong

How did you go about writing the score?

Well, in the case of this score, Dan used different musics, and he put them together the way he wanted to. And whenever he needed some new music, he said, I need music from this time to that time. But he’s a musician, so he has a good sense of it. I like the way he uses the music. He picked some difficult music to play, too.

Was the idea to capture the spirit of Armstrong’s work, or the music that inspired him, or something different altogether?

Well, to say that it’s all a continuum. We represent the continuum. So this is all a part of the table we can set and the menu we can serve. It includes Gottschalk. It’s about Louis Armstrong. It has him, but it also has songs that sound like (Arizona native Charles) Mingus wrote them, or something that nobody at any time has done.

Was the film what you imagined it would be when Dan approached you with the concept?

I didn’t really think about what it would be. We kind of learn playing jazz, if me and you were playing together, I can’t have a picture of what you’re gonna play in my mind, because if I do that, then I’m gonna start judging what you play.

And many times, when you hear a take of something, or you hear a tape back of a piece that you thought sounded a certain way, it doesn’t sound like you thought it sounded. And that’s because your perspective when you’re listening to it is prejudiced by what you expect to hear.

I didn’t have a vision for a silent film, of a contemporary film set in that time. And it had all the kind of fundamentals, mythological things, a lot of American mythology.

Like, the judge has the baby with the mulatto girl, and there’s political corruption in the police and the younger person in that environment trying to make his way, and the kind of moral decisions people have to make, and some make moral decisions and some don’t. And young genius and virtuosity and the upper class and the lower class, all these kind of grand themes that run throughout all of our mythology.

Wynton Marsalis: Louis Armstrong’s ‘genius was transcendent’

Could you talk about how Armstrong has remained such an iconic figure in the history of jazz, in the history of music?

He was just that great. It’s like how Bach has remained. Bach just consolidated the 10-finger way of playing the keyboard. Louis Armstrong taught us how to improvise coherent solos. He was a master of the blues. He could play tangos and things in the Afro-Latin diaspora. Many times, people in those cultures would say, ‘Man, who the hell is that playing our music that well?’

He was an unbelievable singer. He influenced everybody. Even Frank Sinatra said about him, ‘He’s the beginning and the end of it.’ And everybody from Frank to you-name-it, whoever was great, they loved him. Billie Holiday.

People might not have necessarily liked his demeanor because he had an element that came from that minstrel era. But his genius was transcendent.

And if you’re a trumpet player, man, you know…. (laughs) What can you say? Whatever he played on our instrument, it was never played like that before or since. I mean, at this point, you can’t imagine anybody playing with the type of human depth that he played our instrument with, especially when he became an older man.

Some of Louis Armstrong’s playing in the ’60s doesn’t even sound like a trumpet. It’s like a person talking to you.

So his genius has merited that type of attention. And even with all the kind of ‘yuck-yuck’ entertainment stuff that he did, that was required of him to do — and it was something he did willingly — even that has not been able to obscure the actual depth of his genius.

So the contemporary student today, when confronted with Louis Armstrong playing, if they’re a trumpet player, believe me, they say, ‘Damn, what in the world could I do to play like this man plays?’

How New Orleans shaped the musician Louis Armstrong became

Could you talk about the role New Orleans played in shaping the musician Armstrong became?

Well, you got to figure it was French. It was Spanish between 1750-something and 1800. It was at the mouth of the Mississippi, so you had all the riverboat Americana people there. It was the largest Southern port. It was a center of legal prostitution, so all the sailors were down there coming from the Caribbean. You had all that influence.

You had all the stevedores and people working on the levees and their songs. You had the blues coming from Mississippi, and all those people down below sea level in the capital of malaria and diphtheria and typhoid, all the stuff we had that would ruin our population from time to time.

They were hot-blooded people who were always ready to enter into a duel. And the slave population was much freer than it was in other places. Then you had an influx of Haitians after the Haitian Revolution. So it was and unlike any other place in the United States. It was Catholic and it wasn’t Protestant because of the French. And it had Santeria, and all the kind of European traditions were still down there.

So it’s all of these types of things that took place in New Orleans that didn’t take place anywhere else. The Mexican pop exposition brought an influx of Mexican musicians and the style of music that they played. Manuel Perez was a great cornetist who came out of that influx and so on and so forth.

You had the French music and the kind of parlor music that Gottschalk’s music represents. You had the bands used for advertisements. You had white, Black and Creole, a three-strata caste system that was not the way it was in the rest of the United States. I could go on and on.

And all the people at the bottom of society, all the people in the clubs, the sporting houses, people involved in prostitution, gambling, all those people always had an equality you didn’t find anywhere else in the world, right? Because when you’re down there, you’re with everybody else, you know? Jelly Roll Morton actually said that.

Wynton Marsalis: ‘I’m still trying to learn and become better’

What’s been the best part of being involved with this project for you?

It’s all the music I learned and had the opportunity to play, especially if you combine it with Bolden, you know? I got to study styles of people like Freddie Keppard and Manuel Perez and Bunk Johnson and King Oliver, and look at their styles and just learn more about our instrument, more about playing jazz.

That’s an important history that I knew and was familiar with, coming from New Orleans, but to really study it helped my musicianship at that time, I think.

It’s great to hear someone who’s done as much, accomplished as much, as you talk about this as a learning experience. It’s great that you’re still learning.

Hey, man, I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I’m still trying to learn and become better, more knowledgeable.

‘Louis’: A Silent Movie with Live Accompaniment by Wynton Marsalis and Cecile Licad
When: 7 p.m. Thursday, May 22.
Where: Chandler Center for the Arts, 250 N. Arizona Ave.
Admission: $62 and up (fees included).
Details: 480-782-2680, chandlercenter.org

by Ed Masley
Source: The Arizona Republic

That’s Marsalis’ honest assessment of what his Blues Symphony sounded like in its early stages. After several revisions, he’s thrilled with the outcome on a new recording featuring Music Director Jader Bignamini and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Find out more on New Classical Tracks with host Julie Amacher.

Listen to the interview: Play

Source: Your Classical – Minnesota Public Radio

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 38th season, Mother Africa, delves into the creative spirit that unites African and American musical traditions, and runs from July 24, 2025 to June 20, 2026. Featuring 30% more shows than last season, the organization’s 38th season includes: 19 unique weekends of Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts in the 1233-seat Rose Theater, nine concerts in the 467-seat Appel Room, and more than 350 nights of music at Dizzy’s Club, in addition to webcast performances and in-person and virtual education programs. The 2025-26 season also features tour dates worldwide by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, an ensemble of 15 virtuoso instrumentalists, unique soloists, composers, arrangers, and educators whose mandate is to coalesce and animate an unprecedented variety of styles and genres, in collaboration with noted guest artists and appearances by major figures in jazz and its related genres.

Dominating Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 38th season are concerts that explore the deep and enduring ties between jazz, the African continent, and its diaspora, a leitmotif that the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis previously addressed in such past Marsalis opuses as Blood on the Fields (1996), Congo Square (2007), Ochas (2014), and the fresh big band arrangements comprising JLCO’s The South African Songbook concert (2019). The season highlights new works, commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center, from renowned jazz artists in the organization’s new The Commission Series. The new season also includes celebratory concerts to honor the centennials of three towering figures in jazz – Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, and Celia Cruz – further illuminating the far-reaching legacy of Afro-American and the African diaspora musical expression.

“The earliest and most fundamental human mythology is African,” JALC’s Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis says. “From Venda to Igbo to a host of other belief systems across the continent, there are viable solutions to today’s challenges.”

Several of the performances on the season address the creative sensibilities that enslaved Africans applied in embedding the rhythms, timbres, and melodies from their religious-cultural traditions into the DNA of Black American Music – Negro spirituals, the blues, and early jazz – in the drum-averse United States. Another cohort of concerts home in on the Afro-diasporic vernacular and popular musical genres that evolved in the drum-friendly Caribbean, Central American, and South American diasporas and permeated jazz expression from early 20th century New Orleans origins through the first quarter of the 21st century. Others focus on the African consciousness of such modern North American jazz masters as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Randy Weston, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus, and Horace Silver, and the musical production of African jazz musicians after 1945, when the African nations were established and the United Nations was formed.

“Our ancestors had cogent and powerful thoughts on who we are as individuals as we pass through the natural cycles of life, how we should relate to one another socially, and how to be one with the universal spirit that inhabits all,” Marsalis says. “In their globally influential music and dance concepts, we can perceive how to find harmony and balance with nature, how to perceive and interact with the supernatural, and how to create endless variations on fundamental themes in pursuit of a good time.”

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2025-26 season concert schedule is available on jazz.org/25-26.

Reflections on Africa in Rose Theater (July 24-25, 2025), offers a preview of the 2025-2026 season, in which the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, music-directed by Vincent Gardner, presents compositions that reflect the impact of African consciousness on music composed by American jazz masters John Coltrane, Randy Weston, Jackie McLean, René McLean, and Horace Parlan. Opening for the JLCO at this special performance are high school – aged musicians from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Summer Jazz Academy, a two-week residential program for advanced jazz study.

The fall season officially opens in Rose Theater in September with the world premiere of Wynton Marsalis’ Afro! (September 18-20, 2025), a new commission that refracts his lifelong ruminations about the African continent, featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and featuring vocalist Shenel Johns and Ghanaian-New Orleans djembe virtuoso Weedie Braimah. New Orleans-based drummer Herlin Riley joins the orchestra as the centerpiece of its African tour in the fall of 2025.

In October, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis presents Nduduzo Mahkhatini and the Music of Bheki Mseleku (October 24-25, 2025) in Rose Theater, reuniting with the eminent South African pianist-composer. Mahkhatini played an important role in JALC‘s pathbreaking 2019 concert, The South African Songbook, celebrating 25 years of South African democracy with a diverse group of top South African musicians – each of whom selected an essential song from the South African canon, which was then arranged by a member of the JLCO and performed during the orchestra’s first tour of South Africa that year. On this evening, Makhatini and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis present new music along with fresh arrangements of works by Makhatini and Durban-born pianist-saxophonist Bheki Mseleku (1955-2008), whose music Makhatini once analogized to “a sonic pilgrimage from the beautiful and organic landscapes of Durban, to the vibrant energy of London and ultimately toward the inner dimensions of one’s being.”

On October 3-4, 2025 in Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center presents a 91st birthday retrospective of the 75-year-long career of Capetown-born pianist-composer Abdullah Ibrahim, who was known as “Dollar Brand” when Duke Ellington first heard his trio in 1963 and sponsored his first recording. The 2019 NEA Jazz Master’s Ellington and Monk-inspired style will be on display as he performs works from his vast repertoire in solo and trio contexts and with his long-standing four-horn septet Ekaya. Special guests include 2024 NEA Jazz Master Terence Blanchard, Kenny Garrett, and Cecil McBee.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis continues its long-standing relationship with the oeuvre of Duke Ellington with Duke in Africa (January 15-17, 2026), music directed by Chris Lewis and Alexa Tarantino, two of the JLCO‘s newest members, featuring the orchestra performing Ellington’s Liberian Suite (1947), Afro Bossa (1963), and Togo Brava Suite (1971) in Rose Theater.

Rising star pianist-arranger Luther Allison music directs Come Sunday in the Appel Room (January 30-31, 2026), a big band program drawn from Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts of 1965, 1968 and 1973, joined by a top-shelf band and vocalists Joy Brown and Georgia Heers, who sang when Allison first presented the piece at Dizzy’s Club in 2023.

Mother Africa’s impact on Black American sacred music is the focus of the two concerts in the Appel Room that comprise the fifth annual edition of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s popular educational-oriented Journey Through Jazz series. The Mighty Negro Spirituals (November 21-22, 2025), music directed by Marcus Printup, presents a 21st century perspective on the sacred folk songs with religious lyrics that were created and first sung by enslaved Africans, first published in printed form after the U.S. Civil War, in 1867, and popularized internationally by such ensembles as the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The shared DNA that connects Negro spirituals and the blues – work songs, siren calls, call-and-response, hollers – emerges in the arrangements; as do the oceanic emotions, searing beauty and aspirationally encoded messages of deliverance from oppression that animate these extraordinary works.

Drummer Domo Branch music directs the second Journey Through Jazz concert of the 2025-26 season featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on Overtures to Africa in the Appel Room (April 10-11, 2026), tracing the pathways of African consciousness in the music of such signpost figures as Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, and Charles Mingus.

Award-winning bassist Endea Owens and firebrand trumpeter Jeremy Pelt (author of the essential five-volume interview series Griot) debut commissioned works that reflect the footprint of African culture on their respective sensibilities in the Appel Room (March 6-7, 2026). Owens’ Whispers of The Celestial Root: Songs of The Black Earth offers a fresh perspective on Africa’s influence on jazz; and Pelt’s Masks, which features his working quintet plus three African percussionists and a vocalist, distills the composer’s intensive studies of the folklore, mysticism, and overall significance of African tribal masks.

JLCO saxophonist, composer, and educator Sherman Irby music directs Birth of the Blues (April 17-18, 2026) with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and special guests tracing the evolution of blues expression with new arrangements of repertoire by W.C. Handy in Rose Theater.

Big Band Afrobeats (March 6-7, 2026) matches the eminent drummer-bandleader Ulysses Owens Jr.‘s big band with Nigerian-born bassist-composer Michael Olatuja in the Appel Room. Olatuja portrayed impressions gleaned as a citizen of Lagos, London, and New York on the exceptional 2020 album Lagos Pepper Soup, his spectacular blend of West African Afrobeats and jazz.

Trinidad-born trumpeter-composer Etienne Charles, whose most recent Jazz at Lincoln Center appearance was the 2023 concert Carnival: The Sound of A People, addresses Anglophone Afro-Caribbean traditions on Folklore LIVE Vol. 2 (June 5-6, 2026) in the Appel Room. The concert revisits and builds upon territory explored on Charles’ exceptional 2009 album Folklore, on which he brought to life the surreal, mythical characters of Afro-Caribbean folklore with original compositions. Charles unveils new musical stories rooted in various elements of the African diaspora – including, but not limited to, low-country Gullah-Geechee rituals, Haitian Vodou, Afro-Mexican Son Jarocho, and Garifuna rhythms – blending big band textures with dancers, masquerade, and spoken word.

Two stirring new commissions get their world premiere debut in The Commissions Series: Danilo Pérez and Godwin Louis On these evenings, pianist-composer-educator Danilo Pérez, a valued friend of Jazz at Lincoln Center since the 1990s, presents a new commissioned work celebrating the African heritage that shapes Panama’s cultural and musical identity titled The Panáfrica Suite: Echos from the Isthmus and saxophonist Godwin Louis’ introduces African Roots, Diasporic Routes: Benin, Kongo, and the Music of the Americas. Joined by renowned singer Catherine Russell and percussionist Weedie Braimah, Pérez, Louis, and the JLCO treat audiences to a transatlantic voyage in Rose Theater (March 12-14, 2026).

African musical pathways in the southern Americas is the subject of The Commissions Series: Carlos Henriquez and Obed Calvaire (February 27-28, 2026) in Rose Theater, where the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performs new works by JLCO’s Carlos Henriquez and Obed Calvaire. Performing new compositions from both musicians, building off Henriquez and Calvaire’s respective Puerto Rican and Haitian roots, the orchestra shines a spotlight on the colorful and vibrant sounds of the Afro-Caribbean experience along with guests saxophonist Godwin Louis and Grammy Award-winning pianist Zaccai Curtis.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis continues its long-standing exploration of the deep African roots and branches that bedrock the numerous musical genres of Brazil with Soul of Brazil (June 12-13, 2026) in Rose Theater. Mandolin virtuoso Hamilton de Holanda – a frequent JALC collaborator – joins the orchestra on fresh arrangements of his own compositions and those of Moacir Santos, whose pathbreaking fusions of Afro-Brazilian rhythms with the tropes of big band jazz earned him the sobriquet “The Brazilian Duke Ellington.”

São Paulo-born percussion wizard Cyro Baptista, whose long association with Jazz at Lincoln Center includes the 2014 tribute to the music of Moacir Santos with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, celebrates his 75th birthday in Rose Theater with A Banquet for the Spirits (November 7-8, 2025), joined by special guests from across Baptista’s genre-bending, globe-trotting career.

Jazz at Lincoln Center honors the centennial of the immortal Cuban “Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz (1925-2003) with a dance party in the Appel Room (October 17-18, 2025), music directed by JLCO’s Carlos Henriquez, who performed and recorded alongside her as a youngster, and a band including a cohort of New York and Miami-based Latin all-stars and singers, including Aymée Nuviola, Alain Pérez and Ariacne Trujillo Duran.

Dianne Reeves; (February 14-5;15, 2026) features the luminous five-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist and NEA Jazz Master in Rose Theater, presenting her annual celebration of love in all its forms. Revealing an approach to melody and phrasing as skilled as it is spontaneous, the supreme vocalist and expert song interpreter shares songs of rapture and anguish, of romance and heartbreak, delivering cherished standards and surprise repertoire.

The 2025-26 edition of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s perennial holiday concert Big Band Holidays music-directed by trombonist Chris Crenshaw, features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with sensational vocalists Shenel Johns and Kate Kortum, bringing new life to classical tunes in Rose Theater (December 16-21, 2025).

A two-night celebration of sui generis guitar shaman Bill Frisell’s 75th birthday in the Appel Room (March 27-28, 2026) with “In My Dreams” featuring Jenny Scheinman, Hank Roberts, Eyvind Kang, Thomas Morgan and Rudy Royston on Friday, and separate duets with alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and vocalist Petra Haden on Saturday.

Oscar Peterson: A Centennial Celebration honors one of the 20th century’s great improvisers, whose musical catalog was influenced by the struggles of post-colonialism in the African continent with a star-studded evening in Rose Theater (May 8-9, 2026).

Jazz at Lincoln Center celebrates Sketches of Miles: Miles at 100 featuring the JLCO and special guests, performing iconic orchestrations Davis created with the endlessly inventive Gil Evans in Rose Theater (May 14-16, 2026).

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame legend Steve Miller returns to Jazz at Lincoln Center to celebrate two late legends: saxophonist Eddie Harris and drummer Chico Hamilton. Miller’s signature blues-rock guitar style will be complemented by an all-star band as well as the Louisiana rhythms of Lil’ Nathan & The Zydeco Big Timers in Rose Theater (November 14-15, 2025).

Multi-award winning vocalist Jazzmeia Horn returns to the Appel Room (May 29-30, 2026) with Her Noble Force big band. Horn will present a program showcasing her own music, as well as works from female composers who’ve inspired her over the course of her career.

The Appel Room, Ertegun Atrium, Dizzy’s Club, and Varis Leichtman Acoustic Studio, all host concerts during Jazz at Lincoln Center’s third annual Unity Jazz Festival (January 10-11, 2026), presenting a slate of contemporary bands representing a 360-degree panorama of 21st century jazz and jazz-adjacent approaches.

Blues Jam returns to Rose Theater (June 18-20, 2026) for a soul-drenched jam session featuring a star-studded lineup of blues legends and powerhouse vocalists celebrating the enduring power of the blues.

Family Concerts, held live and in-person in Rose Theater, have been a Jazz at Lincoln Center mainstay since the early 1990s. The events this year include Who is Louis Armstrong? (March 6-7, 2026), and Who is Celia Cruz? (October 17-18, 2026), hosted by Carlos Henriquez and featuring vocalist Ariacne Trujillo Duran.

In sum, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2025-26 season admirably supports Marsalis’ assertion that the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra “might be the most flexible and all-encompassing ensemble in the history of our music,” and embodies the organization’s self-imposed challenge to represent the highest aspirations of jazz expression.

The vast majority of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2025-26 season concerts and many sets from Dizzy’s Club will be broadcast in real time on Jazz at Lincoln Center’s subscription streaming service Jazz Live, which can be accessed via smart TV, mobile device, and desktop platforms. Learn more at jazzlive.com.

Education
Jazz at Lincoln Center serves the largest jazz education program network in the world. Its initiatives build on the organization’s 38-year history of promoting education in jazz performance and appreciation. These programs reach all populations, from infants to seniors, and advance Jazz at Lincoln Center’s belief that jazz education is for all – regardless of experience, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.

The goal of each program is for participants to learn the communal history of jazz in a sociopolitical context, receive guidance on better communication of personal objectives while maintaining balance in a group, and gain awareness of the mission of jazz musicians today – building on the aspirational foundation laid down by earlier generations.

With the lodestar composer, pianist, and orchestra leader Duke Ellington as a foundational guide, Jazz at Lincoln Center continues to produce an extensive range of educational and advocacy programs for all ages, not only on the stages in The House of Swing, but through outreach to thousands of public and private schools across the United States that serve a broad cross-section of American children and teenagers. “Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra have a responsibility to invest in community,” Marsalis says. “The community includes our young people. We have a lot of work to do, in all of our schools, teaching our kids how to listen and identify excellence.”

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s signature education program, the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival (EE), celebrates its 31st anniversary on April 30 – May 2, 2026. The program will continue to spread the message of Duke Ellington’s music, leadership, and collective orientation, providing five free transcriptions of original Duke Ellington recordings – along with four original transcriptions of Melba Liston’s music – to high school ensembles across thousands of schools and community bands in 58 countries. In addition to sheet music, the program also provides rehearsal guides, original recordings, professional instruction, and more, free of charge to member schools. The popular Regional EE Festivals return in 26 locations across the United States, in addition to three in Australia.

Other highlights of the 2025-26 Education season include:

• Swing University, an online program that serves a global jazz community with jazz appreciation classes on a wide variety of topics during summer, fall, winter, and spring terms. Classes return online with courses ranging from Celia Cruz to Luis Russell to our popular mainstays – Jazz 101 and Jazz 201.
• WeBop, an interactive program for families with children ages 8 months to 7 years old, hosts in-person classes beginning in September 2025. Through a new WeBop Family Jazz Party Jazz & Africa, children and their caretakers will explore the rich African connections to jazz.
• Let Freedom Swing, are in-school educational concert programs focused on history, civics, and social justice, held as in-person concerts in schools across New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, London (UK), and at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AK.
• The National Collegiate Jazz Championship (formerly the Jack Rudin Jazz Championship), an invitational for 10 collegiate jazz bands takes place at Jazz at Lincoln Center (January 18-19, 2026).
• Jazz Academy continues to provide middle and high school students with high-level, low-cost jazz education and resources both in-person and online. Middle school students receive tuition-free instruction in the program’s Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Bronx locations. High school age students continue instruction at Frederick P. Rose Hall. Following the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra‘s (JLCYO) critically acclaimed spring 2025 tour of London, the JLCYO tours Japan and collaborates with Japanese jazz students in March 2026. The two-week intensive Summer Jazz Academy (SJA) takes place at Bard College in Hudson Valley, and at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. In July, SJA students make their Rose Theater debut as the opener for the JLCO.
• A Closer Listen, a free program featuring jazz experts and enthusiasts holding in-depth discussions on jazz works, continues online.

Touring 2025-26 season

Since summer 2021, Jazz at Lincoln Center has collaborated with organizations throughout New York City and environs beyond to present successful summer concert events, many of which are free of charge. From July through September 2025, Jazz at Lincoln Center continues these summer programs with Caramoor, Times Square Alliance, Lincoln Center, and more.

In June 2025, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will perform at the Montreal Jazz Festival, Rochester Jazz Festival, and Ottawa Jazz Festival.

From July 14-27, 2025, the JLCO will be in residence at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Summer Jazz Academy, a residential high school summer institute for advanced study in jazz performance. Bard College will host the Summer Jazz Academy from July 14-20; Rose Theater hosts Summer Jazz Academy, including workshops and performances, from July 21-27, culminating in student recitals at Dizzy’s Club.

In November 2025, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis travels to Lied Center of Kansas to premiere Wave the Wheat, a suite featuring commissioned works by each orchestra member.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tours Big Band Holidays with singing sensation Shenel Johns, led by Chris Crenshaw, from December 2-14, 2025.

In January and February 2026, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis tours the Midwest, including a stop at the University of Michigan to workshop Wynton Marsalis’s new work, Symphony No. 5, ahead of its premier performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Kimmel Center of Performing Arts in Philadelphia on May 28 and May 30-31, 2026; at Carnegie Hall in New York City on May 29, 2026; and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Orchestra Hall at Chicago Symphony Center in Chicago from June 4-6, 2026.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis embarks on a tour of Japan between March 16-22, 2026.

Dizzy’s Club

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s world-renowned Dizzy’s Club, one of the three main performance venues at Frederick P. Rose Hall, produces world-class jazz performances nightly, often reflecting and augmenting the programming in Rose Theater and the Appel Room.

Throughout the opening months of the 2025-26 season, performances include Herlin Riley‘s now annual Thanksgiving week run; Cyrus Chestnut Quartet; the great vocalist Mary Stallings, the cabaret-oriented Songbook Sundays series; Hometown Heroes; and Salsa Meets Jazz series. Dizzy’s iconic Thursday-Saturday evening Late Night Sessions, featuring some of the most talented emerging artists in jazz, continues.

Health and Safety Guidelines

We believe in the power of music to uplift, inspire, and create a sense of community. We very much look forward to welcoming you to The House of Swing at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall this season and are committed to employing all measures to ensure your safety as well as the safety of our artists and staff. Learn more about our health and safety guidelines at jazz.org.

Ticket Information

Current Jazz at Lincoln Center subscribers and audiences are invited to explore our Create Your Own subscription for all Rose Theater and Appel Room concerts and enjoy 10% off single ticket prices. The Create Your Own package allows subscribers to create a custom concert package of three or more performances across the season, personalized to individual interests and schedules, across both venues.

Subscribers with a Curated Series or fixed seat package enjoy a 15% discount off single ticket prices. Curated subscriptions come with the benefit of staying in the same seat for every performance and are renewable each year, allowing subscribers to keep their seats from season to season.

In order to reserve the best seats, current subscribers can take advantage of a priority period beginning today through June 30, 2025 before single sale tickets go on sale to the general public on July 22, 2025.

Becoming a subscriber is the best way to get the best seats at the guaranteed best prices for the entire season, as single ticket prices will increase based on demand as concerts approach. Subscribers also have the benefit of utilizing free, unlimited ticket exchanges to manage their schedule.

For more information on 2025-26 season subscriptions, visit jazz.org/subs. To order a subscription or to request information, please call the Subscription Services hotline at 212-258-9999, e-mail subscriptions@jazz.org, or visit jazz.org/subs.

Membership Discount

Jazz at Lincoln Center offers a robust Membership program with a wide array of benefits, including deep discounts on concert tickets. Individuals who join at the $100 level and above are eligible to receive VIP single ticket pre-sale access and discounted tickets to Jazz at Lincoln Center-produced concerts in Rose Theater and the Appel Room on the day of the event. Tickets must be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office or online beginning at 12:01 a.m. on the day of the performance. Members must show their valid membership card or log in to jazz.org using their account credentials to receive this discount. Subject to availability. Learn more and sign up at jazz.org/membership.

VIP single ticket pre-sale for donors, members, and subscribers will be available starting July 15, 2025. To access single tickets before the general public, become a Jazz at Lincoln Center member by July 14, 2025.

Pricing

Ticket prices for Rose Theater are $30 and up dependent upon seating section, except as noted below:

Family Concert tickets in Rose Theater are $10, $20 and $25.

Ticket prices for the Appel Room are $55 and up, dependent on seating section for the 7:00 p.m. sets, and $45 and up, depending upon seating section for the 9:30 p.m. sets.

Ticket prices for Dizzy’s Club start at $20.00.

Note: Hot Seats – $10 seats for each Rose Theater performance (excluding Family Concerts and other performances as specified) and select performances in the Appel Room – are available for purchase by the general public on the Wednesday prior to each performance. Tickets are subject to availability; please call 212-258-9877 for available Hot Seats performance dates.

Hot Seats are available only in person at the Box Office, with a maximum of two tickets per person. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Hot Seats Ticket Discount Program is supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

*Please note that a $3.50 Jazz at Lincoln Center Facility Fee applies to ALL ticket purchases, with the exception of $10 Hot Seats. A $7 handling fee also applies when purchasing tickets from CenterCharge or when purchasing tickets online via jazz.org.

All single tickets for the Appel Room and Rose Theater can be purchased through jazz.org 24 hours a day or through CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, Ground Floor.

Box Office hours:
Tuesday-Sunday: 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Monday: Closed
Open an additional half-hour after the scheduled start time of ticketed performances. On Wednesdays before a Rose theater concert, the Box Office will open at 10 a.m. to sell Hot Seats.

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER 2025-26 SEASON CONCERT CHRONOLOGY

Reflections on Africa
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
July 24-25, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Music-directed by JLCO trombonist Vincent Gardner, this special summer concert features Africa-inspired compositions from John Coltrane, Randy Weston, Jackie McLean, René McLean, Horace Parlan, and more. With an opening performance from students participating in our Summer Jazz Academy, this multi-generational concert celebrates the music’s roots as well as some of its youngest stars.

Wynton Marsalis’ Afro! with Shenel Johns and Weedie Braimah
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
September 18-20, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Afro! brings the vibrant rhythms of Africa to the Rose Theater stage with the world premiere of a new composition by Wynton Marsalis. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra is joined by Ghanaian djembe virtuoso Weedie Braimah and extraordinary vocalist Shenel Johns for an exploration of jazz’s deep roots in African music.

Abdullah Ibrahim
October 3-4, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Just shy of his 91st birthday, South African legend and NEA Jazz Master Abdullah Ibrahim returns to Rose Theater for a career-spanning retrospective. Performing solo, in a trio, with his legendary Ekaya group, and alongside special guests Terence Blanchard, Kenny Garrett, and Cecil McBee, this concert puts Ibrahim’s full talents on display.

Celia Cruz: A Centennial Celebration!
October 17-18, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Experience the enduring legacy of Celia Cruz, the “Queen of Salsa,” with an all-star band led by JLCO bassist Carlos Henriquez, who played alongside Cruz in his youth. This tribute concert features guest vocalists Aymée Nuviola, Alain Pérez, and Ariacne Trujillo Duran and honors one of the most influential voices in Latin music.

Family Concert: Who is Celia Cruz?
October 18, 2025
3:00 p.m.
Rose Theater
Discover the life and music of Celia Cruz, the “Queen of Salsa,” in this engaging family-friendly concert featuring vocalist Ariacne Trujillo Duran. Learn about the fundamentals of salsa and Cruz’s monumental influence on Latin music with your host, JLCO bassist Carlos Henriquez.

Nduduzo Makhathini and the Music of Bheki Mseleku
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
October 24-25, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Take a musical journey through South African jazz with visionary pianist Nduduzo Makhathini. This dynamic concert finds the JLCO channeling the iconic sounds of multi-instrumentalist and composer Bheki Mseleku and features a new composition by Makhathini in a tribute to South Africa’s rich musical heritage.

Cyro Baptista at 75: A Banquet for the Spirits
November 7-8, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Brazilian percussion master Cyro Baptista, described by Wynton Marsalis as “truly one of the greatest musicians in the world,” marks his 75th birthday with a high-energy, unforgettable celebration at Rose Theater featuring special guests from across his genre-bending, globe-trotting career.

Steve Miller
November 14-15, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend Steve Miller returns to Jazz at Lincoln Center to honor two late legends: saxophonist Eddie Harris and drummer Chico Hamilton. Miller’s signature blues-rock guitar style will be complemented by an all-star band as well as the Louisiana rhythms of Lil’ Nathan & The Zydeco Big Timers for a night of lively rhythms and bluesy grooves.

Journey Through Jazz: The Mighty Negro Spirituals
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
November 21-22, 2025
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
The Journey Through Jazz series, now in its fifth year, continues with The Mighty Negro Spirituals, a musical adventure guided by JLCO trumpeter Marcus Printup. Discover how the Negro spirituals of Afro-American enslaved people became the bedrock of jazz and gospel music.
Part of the Lynne and Richard Pasculano Jazz Series, this is a pay-what-you-choose performance. Concert will be on sale on July 22.

Big Band Holidays
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
December 16-19, 2025: 7:30 p.m.
December 20, 2025: 2:00 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
December 21, 2025: 2:00 p.m.
Rose Theater
Ring in the holiday season with this annual fan-favorite performance filled with festive cheer! Featuring music direction by JLCO trombonist Chris Crenshaw and sensational vocalists Shenel Johns and Kate Kortum, this holiday spectacular brings new life to classic tunes.

Unity Jazz Festival
January 9-10, 2026
Events take place throughout Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center
The third annual Unity Jazz Festival brings together an all-star lineup of acts performing throughout Frederick P. Rose Hall, the House of Swing. With living legends, rising stars, and avid fans mingling between the Appel Room, Dizzy’s Club, and the Ertegun Atrium late into the night, the festival delivers an electric atmosphere where music lovers unite to experience jazz in all its forms.

Duke in Africa
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
January 15-17, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
This memorable concert – staged 60 years after Duke Ellington’s historic performance in Senegal – explores the composer’s profound connection to Africa. Co-music-directed by saxophonists Chris Lewis and Alexa Tarantino, the JLCO brings new life to compositions drawn from Ellington’s Afro-Bossa, Liberian Suite, and the Grammy Award-winning Togo Brava Suite.

Come Sunday: The Sacred Works of Duke Ellington
January 30-31, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Duke Ellington’s sacred compositions, which he called “the most important thing I have ever done,” will be brought to life by Grammy Award-winning pianist and music director Luther S. Allison. Vocalists Joy Brown, Georgia Heers, and a first-call big band will help explore the spiritual depths of Ellington’s music.

Dianne Reeves
February 13-14, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Five-time Grammy Award winner and NEA Jazz Master vocalist Dianne Reeves returns to Rose Theater for a memorable Valentine’s Day. Whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer, don’t miss this beloved tradition performed by one of the most extraordinary vocalists in jazz today.

The Commissions Series: Jeremy Pelt and Endea Owens
February 20-21, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Join trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and bassist Endea Owens for an evening of innovative jazz inspired by Africa. Both musicians, also known for their compositional brilliance, will present their latest works — Masks and Whispers of the Celestial Root: Songs of the Black Earth, respectively — offering fresh perspectives on Africa’s influence on jazz.

The Commissions Series: Carlos Henriquez and Obed Calvaire
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
February 27-28, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra bassist Carlos Henriquez and percussionist Obed Calvaire pay tribute to their respective Puerto Rican and Haitian roots with new compositions. Joined by saxophonist Godwin Louis and Grammy Award-winning pianist Zaccai Curtis, the JLCO spotlights the vibrant sounds of the Afro-Caribbean experience.

Big Band Afrobeats: Ulysses Owens Jr. and Michael Olatuja
March 6-7, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Backed by a full big band, drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. and British-Nigerian bassist Michael Olatuja present a unique blend of jazz and Afrobeat rhythms in the Appel Room. With their innovative approach and high-octane energy, they’ll take guests on a thrilling musical journey through Afrobeat’s infectious grooves.

Family Concert: Who is Louis Armstrong?
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
March 7, 2026
3:00 p.m.
Rose Theater
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra pays tribute to the incomparable Louis Armstrong, one of jazz’s foundational figures, in this lively family concert. Introduce your youngest listeners to “Pops” and his groundbreaking contributions to jazz with a performance that will forever change the way they think about music.

The Commissions Series: Danilo Pérez and Godwin Louis
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
March 12-14, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Two stirring new commissions get their debut: Grammy Award-winning Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez’s The Panáfrica Suite: Echoes from the Isthmus and saxophonist Godwin Louis’ African Roots, Diasporic Routes: Benin, Kongo, and the Music of the Americas. Joined by renowned singer Catherine Russell and percussionist Weedie Braimah, Pérez, Louis, and the JLCO treat audiences to a transatlantic voyage across the history of our music.

Bill Frisell: 75th Birthday Celebration with Special Guests
March 27-28, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Jazz guitar icon Bill Frisell takes over the Appel Room for a star-studded weekend that looks to the future while renewing the past. On Friday, he continues his “In My Dreams” project with longtime collaborators Jenny Scheinman, Hank Roberts, Eyvind Kang, Thomas Morgan, and Rudy Royston; on Saturday, he’ll duet with vocalist Petra Haden and alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.

Journey Through Jazz: Overtures to Africa
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
April 10-11, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Overtures to Africa explores Africa’s influence on some of jazz’s greatest legends: Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach. Part of the Journey Through Jazz concert series, this performance brings the JLCO to the intimate Appel Room, delving into the profound impact of African culture on jazz.
Part of the Lynne and Richard Pasculano Jazz Series, this is a pay what you choose performance. Concert will be on-sale on July 22.

Birth of the Blues
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
April 17-18, 2026
7:30 p.m
Rose Theater
Embark on a captivating journey through the evolution of blues, starting with W. C. Handy, the “Father of the Blues.” Led by JLCO saxophonist Sherman Irby, this concert traces the blues up the Mississippi River, showcasing its deep roots in American culture and its development into a musical genre that revolutionized the world.

Oscar Peterson: A Centennial Celebration
May 8-9, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Piano titan Oscar Peterson looms large as one of the 20th century’s great improvisers. Join us for a star-studded night in honor of one of the piano’s greatest practitioners.
Concert will be on sale on July 22.

Sketches of Miles: Miles Davis at 100
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
May 14-16, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
The JLCO commemorates the centennial of one of jazz’s most influential figures, Miles Davis. Featuring the orchestrations of one of Davis’ greatest collaborators, the endlessly inventive Gil Evans, these performances demonstrate why the innovative trumpeter’s big band work was every bit as important as his small group output.

Jazzmeia Horn and Her Noble Force
May 29-30, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Grammy Award-nominated and NAACP Image Award-winning vocalist Jazzmeia Horn returns to the Appel Room with Her Noble Force big band. Known for her bold interpretations and fearless improvisations, Horn will present her own music – as well as works from female composers who’ve inspired her – in front of the Manhattan skyline.

Etienne Charles: Folklore LIVE Vol. 2
June 5-6, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Trumpeter Etienne Charles, known for his innovative stagings of Caribbean lore, returns to the Appel Room to present Folklore LIVE Vol. 2. Charles unveils new musical stories rooted in various elements of the African diaspora connecting the African diaspora – including, but not limited to, low country Gullah-Geechee rituals, Haitian Vodou, Afro-Mexican Son Jarocho, and Garifuna rhythms – blending big band textures with dancers, masquerade, and spoken word.

Soul of Brazil
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
June 12-13, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Featuring the JLCO with Wynton Marsalis, this concert brings the unmistakable rhythms of Brazilian music to Rose Theater. Featuring new music from special guest bandolinist Hamilton de Holanda as well as the works of legendary composer Moacir Santos, this concert amplifies the heartbeat of Brazil, giving shape to its musical soul.

In a dressing room behind the stage in the Metropolitan Opera House, Wynton Marsalis, the trumpeter and educator, intently watched a live feed of the big band representing the Osceola County School for the Arts, from Kissimmee, Fla. They were playing Dizzy Gillespie’s “Things to Come,” a piece that can expose any weaknesses in a big band. Being a good jazz musician isn’t just about playing fast and loud and high, but this song requires musicians to do all of that.

The school’s lead trumpet player was in the middle of a solo. A dexterous player who could hit the high notes, he sounded like a professional. “Watch, the director’s going to wave off the backgrounds here,” Mr. Marsalis said, using some colorful language to say the soloist had not gotten to his good stuff yet.

The director then made a small gesture to the rest of his band, telling them to wait to let the solo develop. It was a chart that Mr. Marsalis, the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, had surely heard live hundreds of times, but each time it is full of small decisions like these, making it a new experience.

It has been nearly a century since Duke Ellington’s orchestra became the house band at the Cotton Club on 142nd Street. Even there, where Ellington and his group of Black musicians played in front of all-white audiences, patrons were expected to be active listeners. Ellington is quoted in the book “Duke Ellington’s America” as saying the club “demanded absolutely silence” during performances, and that anybody making noise would quickly be ushered out the door.

Ellington knew his work had a signature. He wrote with particular members of his orchestra, like the saxophonist Johnny Hodges or the trumpeter Cootie Williams, in mind, and he believed that nobody else could sound like them, no matter how hard they tried.

Still, at Essentially Ellington, an annual high school big-band festival organized by Jazz at Lincoln Center and held over the weekend, teenagers from all over the world tried their hardest to channel those musicians anyway.

This year, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the festival, 30 big bands of the 127 that sent in application tapes came to New York to compete for top honors, up from the usual 15. The finalists included 27 American groups and bands from Australia, Japan and Spain. Each group selected three songs to perform from the Essentially Ellington library. The top 10 finishers advanced to a second and final, competitive round. The top three then played an exhibition concert — at the opera house instead of at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, since the additional capacity was needed — before a winner was announced.

But the event’s vibe, while exacting, does not feel like something out of the movie “Whiplash” — at least not anymore. Years ago, organizers felt the competition was getting too cutthroat, and looked to soften its edges. Now, students perform, but also jam with kids from other schools, attend clinics with professionals, and have meals where they’re seated not by school, but by the instrument they play. In the hallways, members of different schools spontaneously burst into song together.

“It’s like the top arts festival,” said Julius Tolentino, the jazz director at Newark Academy in Livingston, N.J., whose band won the competition in 2024. “There’s nothing that compares to this. They roll out the red carpet for the students. It’s changed the way band directors all over the world deal with jazz music.”

The organization’s work isn’t limited to the contest. It runs an annual training program for band directors and sends out professional musicians, often members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, to help guide bands that qualify for the finals.

The festival also doubles as a tool for the creation of a big band canon. For 30 years, the Jazz at Lincoln Center team has created sheet music for pieces by Ellington and some of his contemporaries, like Gillespie or Count Basie or Benny Carter, and has sent it out to schools interested in competing, for free. That process is not always simple, and often involves digging through the archives at the Smithsonian to look at existing, handwritten scores and transcribing from recordings.

“There’s a philosophy that jazz is a methodology, not an art form that has a canon,” said Todd Stoll, the vice president of education at Jazz at Lincoln Center. “The historical viewpoint of this music was, I won’t say ignored, but it wasn’t something that there was much focus on at the university level. I went all the way through a master’s degree at a major conservatory. I never played a note of Duke Ellington’s music.”

That would be unfathomable now, in part because of the work that Jazz at Lincoln Center has done. Mr. Marsalis bristled at the idea that Ellington was not an international star before the festival existed, but Essentially Ellington, and the work that makes it possible, may do as much as anything to ensure that his work persists.

For Mr. Marsalis, who has been at the center of debates about the jazz canon for decades, this could be a victory lap. But he insists on Essentially Ellington as an example of how playing old music does not need to be a backward-looking endeavor.

“We are not cynical,” he said. “When you’re establishing a new mythology, how much time do you have to attack the old mythology?”

Every band that auditions for a spot in New York is a part of that new mythology, an example of how the music is not a historical document, but something that is alive as long as it is being interpreted.
The experience, however, can be intimidating until you are a part of it.

When Dr. Ollie Liddell, the band director at Memphis Central High School in Memphis, first saw videos on YouTube of groups that had reached the finals of the Essentially Ellington festival, over a decade ago, he thought to himself: “We’re never going to have a band that good.”

Memphis Central is a public high school, and like most public school band directors, Dr. Liddell is responsible for not just the jazz band, but the marching band and concert ensembles, too. He has to handle fund-raising and convince clinicians to come in and work with his band. None of his jazz students receive private instruction, save one, who receives lessons from a Memphis Central alumnus over Zoom. Essentially Ellington can’t always be top of mind.

That’s not the case for many of the groups that make it to New York, with arts magnet schools and private academies offering instrument-specific instructors, and a number of students taking private lessons as well. But even without those luxuries, a resourceful director and passionate kids can still compete. The proof? Memphis Central took first place at this year’s competition.

It is a cliché to say that jazz is an interactive music, a conversation. But those conversations aren’t confined to the stage. On Saturday, during its final performance for the judges, Memphis Central took the stage and the sound of Ellington’s “Rockabye River” came all at once. The rumble of the drum set’s low tom. The shout of the horns. The growling trumpet soloist punctuating each of the written phrases.

The work was brought to life and made new. A crowd filled with competitors and rivals sat with wide eyes and open mouths, with some yelping their approval.

None of them, clearly, were cynical.

By Chris Almeida
Photographs and Video by Gus Aronson
Source: New York Times

The new season opens on July 24 with a preview concert,, “Reflections on Africa,” in the Rose Theater. The program, with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Vincent Gardner as the musical director, offers compositions reflecting the effect of African consciousness on music composed by jazz artists including Coltrane, Randy Weston, Jackie McLean and Horace Parlan.

The season continues on Sept. 18 with “Afro!,” a new composition by Wynton Marsalis, the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which illuminates his meditations on the African continent. It will also feature the vocalist Shenel Johns, the djembe player Weedie Braimah and the drummer Herlin Riley.

On Oct. 3-4, Jazz at Lincoln Center will present a 91st birthday retrospective of the 75-year-long career of the Capetown-born pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim. (He was known as Dollar Brand when Duke Ellington first heard his trio in 1963 and sponsored his first recording.)

On Oct. 24 and Oct. 25, the Orchestra will feature another South African pianist, Nduduzo Makhathini, including a debut of new work that he has composed.

Works by Ellington take center stage Jan. 15-17, 2026, with “Duke in Africa.” The music directors for that program will be Chris Lewis and Alexa Tarantino, two of the Orchestra’s newest members.

On Feb. 13 and on Valentine’s Day, Dianne Reeves will explore the universal theme of love as she shares songs that highlight rapture, anguish, romance and heartbreak.

The Orchestra will feature works by Davis from May 14-16, 2026, in “Sketches of Miles: Miles Davis at 100.” Later that month (May 29-30, 2026), Jazzmeia Horn, the winner of the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Vocals Competition, will present a program showcasing her vocal range and improvisation, with the Her Noble Force big band.

Etienne Charles, the Trinidad-born trumpeter and composer, will take on Anglophone Afro-Caribbean traditions in “Folklore LIVE Vol. 2” from June 5-6, 2026, in the Appel Room. Later that month, June 12-13, 2026, the Orchestra with Marsalis will also explore the African roots that help make up the genres of Brazil, with “Soul of Brazil,” featuring Hamilton de Holanda and the music of Moacir Santos, in the Rose Theater.

The full season is online at jazz.org/25-26

By Derrick Bryson Taylor
Source: New York Times

From May 7-10, at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, students participated in section-specific masterclasses, jam sessions with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members, pre-performance rehearsals, a celebratory dinner, and more. The competition culminated in an afternoon concert and awards ceremony on Sunday, May 11 at the Metropolitan Opera House where each top-placing band performed with its choice of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra member as a featured soloist.

In honor of the milestone 30th anniversary, Jazz at Lincoln Center expanded the hallmark program, doubling the number of competing bands, and included international bands for the first time. A three day competition in years past, the 2025 Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival took place over five days.

Wynton Marsalis, Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, presented awards to the top bands. Memphis Central High School from Memphis, Tennessee took home the first place trophy and an award of $10,000. Sant Andreu Jazz Band from Barcelona, Spain earned second place honors and a prize of $7,500. Osceola County School for the Arts from Kissimmee, Florida accepted third place with an award of $5,000. Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts from West Palm Beach, Florida was awarded an honorable mention and $2,500. The remaining bands were each awarded $1,000. All monetary awards will go toward improving the jazz education programs of each respective high school.

Members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Essentially Ellington alumnus presented 40 individual and section awards which included recognition for outstanding rhythm section, outstanding trumpet section, outstanding trombone soloist, outstanding piano soloist, and the new outstanding pep section. Below is the full list of awardees.

“Congratulations to all our bands who performed this week,” said Marsalis. “We recognize your sacrifice and commend you on your commitment. One of the things I’m most proud of about this festival is how it brings together parents, children, administrators, and communities around something truly worthwhile — the inner development of our kids.”

In addition to highlighting the best high school jazz bands in the world, the event also recognized Ethan Liao, a freshman at San Francisco University High School in San Francisco, CA, for winning the 13th Annual Dr. J. Douglas White Essentially Ellington Student Composition and Arranging Contest. On May 8, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra recorded his original composition,“By Candlelight.” On May 11, at the Metropolitan Opera House, Liao joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on piano as they performed his winning composition. Additionally, Liao received a $1,000 cash prize, a composition lesson with GRAMMY Award-winning saxophonist Ted Nash, and a free trip to New York City for the week.

“The past five days have shown us that music, and especially jazz music, still has resonance in our culture. And that resonance can transcend the barriers that we are told exist between us,” said Todd Stoll, Vice President of Education at Jazz at Lincoln Center. “_Essentially Ellington_ brings together a diverse group of young people all with one specific goal: to play jazz at the highest level-not as an act of nostalgia, but as the living embodiment of the highest ideals of our shared humanity. Congratulations to all the participants, and we shall swing again next year!”

Since its inception in 1987, Jazz at Lincoln Center has produced an extensive range of jazz educational and advocacy programs for all ages, including Essentially Ellington. This year’s finalists were selected from 127 schools, a record number, that submitted recordings of select tunes from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s R. Theodore Ammon Archives and Music Library. The program continues to spread the message of Duke Ellington’s music, leadership, and collective orientation, providing high school ensembles with free transcriptions of original Duke Ellington recordings – accompanied by rehearsal guides, original recordings, professional instruction, and more – to thousands of schools and community bands in 58 countries. To date, more than 7,100 high school bands have benefitted from free charts and resources.

Assets, including photos and videos of the three finalist bands, can be found here=. Attribute image credit to Gilberto Tadday for Jazz at Lincoln Center and video credit to Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Complete list of 2025 Essentially Ellington Awardees

HONORABLE MENTION RHYTHM SECTION

Garfield High School

Susan E. Wagner High School

Sant Andreu Jazz Band

OUTSTANDING RHYTHM SECTION

Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts

New World School of the Arts

Newark Academy

Memphis Central High School

HONORABLE MENTION SAXOPHONE SECTION

Roosevelt High School

Stanford Jazz Workshop

Blackburn High School

Hoover High School

Bothell High School

OUTSTANDING SAXOPHONE SECTION

Agoura High School

Garfield High School

Orange County School of the Arts

Plano West Senior High School

William H. Hall High School

OUTSTANDING CLARINET SECTION

Newton South High School

HONORABLE MENTION TROMBONE SECTION

Blackburn High School

OUTSTANDING TROMBONE SECTION

Byron Center High School

Orange County School of the Arts

New World School of the Arts

Memphis Central High School

HONORABLE MENTION TRUMPET SECTION

Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music

King Philip Regional High School

Newark Academy

OUTSTANDING TRUMPET SECTION

Orange County School of the Arts

Sant Andreu Jazz Band

Memphis Central High School

Osceola County School for the Arts

HONORABLE MENTION BRASS SECTION

Stanford Jazz Workshop

OUTSTANDING BRASS SECTION

Orange County School of the Arts

Plano West Senior High School

OUTSTANDING PEP SECTION

Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts

Tomisato High School

Susan E. Wagner High School

HONORABLE MENTION PIANO

Jose Morales (Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music)

James Pakhomou (Jazz House Kids)

Joshua Gargett (Roosevelt High School)

OUTSTANDING PIANO

Ben Collins-Siegel (Newark Academy)

Zach Michalec (Ann Arbor Huron High School)

Sophie Ionitsa (Mountlake Terrace High School)

Pau Garcia (Sant Andreu Jazz Band)

Atticus Coen (Sun Prairie High School)

HONORABLE MENTION GUITAR

Charlie Debski (Youth Jazz Ensemble of DuPage)

Joel Cooper (Rio Americano High School)

Giacomo Messina (Newark Academy)

OUTSTANDING GUITAR

Ryu Chan (New World School of the Arts)

Sydney Law (Byron Center High School)

Justin Ho (Mountlake Terrace High School)

OUTSTANDING BANJO

Sydney Law (Byron Center High School)

HONORABLE MENTION BASS

Julia Brideau (King Philip Regional High School)

Mac McRae (Hoover High School)

Ishow Hatakeyama (Tomisato High School)

OUTSTANDING BASS

Jacoby Bethea (Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts)

Sam Konin (Jazz House Kids)

Ted Crall (Newark Academy)

Laesio Littlejohn (Plano West Senior High School)

Zeke Hirsh (Tucson Jazz Institute)

HONORABLE MENTION DRUMS

Killian Donovan (Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music)

Ryan Weaver (Youth Jazz Ensemble of DuPage)

Evan Khaw (Blackburn High School)

OUTSTANDING DRUMS

Luc Randall (Roosevelt High School)

Cameron Payne (Ann Arbor Huron High School)

Elijah Lawler (Ann Arbor Huron High School)

Kiki Melick (William H. Hall High School)

OUTSTANDING DOUBLER (DRUMS & PERCUSSION)

Joeily Pena (Susan E. Wagner High School)

HONORABLE MENTION FLUTE

Aidan Gardner (Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts)

HONORABLE MENTION CLARINET

Nathan Tokunaga (Stanford Jazz Workshop)

Sophia Kidwell (Carroll Senior High School)

Luis Fernandez Guzman (Osceola County School for the Arts)

Akane Doi (Tomisato High School)

OUTSTANDING CLARINET

Leila Mostaghimi (Newton South High School)

Gabriel Huang (Rio Americano High School)

Akane Doi (Tomisato High School)

HONORABLE MENTION ALTO SAXOPHONE

Benji Riggio (New World School of the Arts)

Michael Shebar (Youth Jazz Ensemble of DuPage)

Nathan Tokunaga (Stanford Jazz Workshop)

Ace Aure (Blackburn High School)

Seth Langford (Bothell High School)

OUTSTANDING ALTO SAXOPHONE

Harrison Chisolm (King Philip Regional High School)

Jackson Hankins (Memphis Central High School)

Paolo Zulueta-Lomanno (Osceola County School for the Arts)

Quinn Knox (William H. Hall High School)

Julian Dominguez (Youth Jazz Ensemble of DuPage)

HONORABLE MENTION TENOR SAXOPHONE

Daniel Goodwin (Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts)

Elijah Boyd (Hoover High School)

Jay Thatte (Newark Academy)

Michael Fradkin (Carroll Senior High School)

OUTSTANDING TENOR SAXOPHONE

Chloe Madrak (William H. Hall High School)

Samuel Chung (Orange County School of the Arts)

Kiara Rouse (Osceola County School for the Arts)

Ryan Kaplan (New World School of the Arts)

Lola Peñaranda (Sant Andreu Jazz Band)

Ben Sherman (Jazz House Kids)

HONORABLE MENTION BARITONE SAXOPHONE

Bernat Benavente (Sant Andreu Jazz Band)

Yuta Horiuchi (Tomisato High School)

Aliah Bragg (Bothell High School)

OUTSTANDING BARITONE SAXOPHONE

Nicollette Sollis (Susan E. Wagner High School)

Jaxon Hirsh (Tucson Jazz Institute)

HONORABLE MENTION DOUBLER

Garett Ames (Agoura High School)

OUTSTANDING DOUBLER

Daniel Tauhert (Plano West Senior High School)

Sky Van Scoyoc (Roosevelt High School)

Samuel Chung (Orange County School of the Arts)

OUTSTANDING MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST

David Nguyen (Tucson Jazz Institute)

HONORABLE MENTION TROMBONE

Thomas Holmes(Bothell High School)

Robert Ford (King Philip Regional High School)

Isaiah Bunderson (Sun Prairie High School)

Jasmine Richards (Blackburn High School)

Andrew Krivenko (Susan E. Wagner High School)

Bennet Harvey (Mountlake Terrace High School)

OUTSTANDING TROMBONE

Jordan Klein (Agoura High School)

Sidney Kitchen (Ann Arbor Huron High School)

Eric Collins (King Philip Regional High School)

Marqese Cobb (Memphis Central High School)

HONORABLE MENTION TRUMPET

Rudradip Ray (Ann Arbor Huron High School)

Gerard Peñaranda (Sant Andreu Jazz Band)

Braeden Jackson (Hoover High School)

Timothy Park (Garfield High School)

Mia Rousseau (Rio Americano High School)

Ayden Retcheski (Sun Prairie High School)

OUTSTANDING TRUMPET

Miri Izenberg (Orange County School of the Arts)

Allie Molin (Orange County School of the Arts)

Matthew Harper (Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts)

Zach Balding (New World School of the Arts)

Adam Sheena (Newton South High School)

Marti Costalago (Sant Andreu Jazz Band)

Elsa Armengou (Sant Andreu Jazz Band)

Kingston Grandberry (Memphis Central High School)

OUTSTANDING LEAD TRUMPET

Maggie Kester (Carroll Senior High School)

Pedro Fregoso (Orange County School of the Arts)

Sam Tschopp (Youth Jazz Ensemble of DuPage)

OUTSTANDING VOCALS

Clàudia Rostey (Sant Andreu Jazz Band)

ELLA FITZGERALD AWARD

Akshra Yagnik (Newark Academy) – vocals

Xavier Anderson (Osceola County School for the Arts) – trumpet

The top-placing bands were chosen by a judging panel comprising distinguished jazz musicians and historians, including Randy Brecker, Carmen Bradford, Rich DeRosa, Joseph Jefferson, Ingrid Jensen, Sherrie Maricle, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Ulysses Owens Jr., Catherine Russell, Reggie Thomas, Camille Thurman, Bijon Watson, Liesel Whitaker and Todd Williams.

The 2025 Essentially Ellington Competition Finalists (in alphabetical order)

Agoura High School (Agoura Hills, California)
Directed by Robert Hackett

Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts (West Palm Beach, Florida)
Directed by Christopher M. De León

Ann Arbor Huron High School (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
Directed by Robert Ash

Blackburn High School (Victoria, Australia)
Directed by Andrew O’Connell

Bothell High School (Bothell, Washington)
Directed by Matt Simmons

Byron Center High School (Byron Center, Michigan)
Directed by Marc Townley

Carroll Senior High School (Southlake, Texas)
Directed by David Lown

Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music (Bronx, New York)
Directed by Penelope Smetters-Jacono

Garfield High School (Seattle, Washington)
Directed by Jared Sessink

Hoover High School (Hoover, Alabama)
Directed by Sallie White

Jazz House Kids (Montclair, New Jersey)
Directed by Nathan Eklund

King Philip Regional High School (Wrentham, Massachusetts)
Directed by Michael Keough

Memphis Central High School (Memphis, Tennessee)
Directed by Dr. Ollie Liddell

Mountlake Terrace High School (Mountlake Terrace, Washington)
Directed by Darin Faul

Newark Academy (Livingston, New Jersey)
Directed by Julius Tolentino

New World School of the Arts (Miami, Florida)
Directed by Jim Gasior

Newton South High School (Newton, Massachusetts)
Directed by Lisa Linde

Orange County School of the Arts (Santa Ana, California)
Directed by John Reynolds

Osceola County School for the Arts (Kissimmee, Florida)
Directed by Jason Anderson

Plano West Senior High School (Plano, Texas)
Directed by Preston Pierce

Rio Americano High School (Sacramento, California)
Directed by Josh Murray

Roosevelt High School (Seattle, Washington)
Directed by Hannah Mowry

Sant Andreu Jazz Band (Barcelona, Spain)
Directed by Joan Chamorro

Stanford Jazz Workshop (Stanford, California)
Directed by Michael Galisatus

Sun Prairie High School (Sun Prairie, Wisconsin)
Directed by Matt McVeigh

Susan E. Wagner High School (Staten Island, New York)
Directed by Paul Corn

Tomisato High School (Chiba, Japan)
Directed by Masaki Shinohara

Tucson Jazz Institute (Tucson, Arizona)
Directed by Brice Winston

William H. Hall High School (West Hartford, Connecticut)
Directed by Phil Giampietro

Youth Jazz Ensemble of DuPage (Wheaton, Illinois)
Directed by Robert Blazek

For more information, please visit jazz.org/eee

He’s also the son of Ellis Marsalis Jr., an influential jazz pianist and educator, who taught Marsalis about the jazz forefather from a young age. By 18, Marsalis recognized Armstrong as the “Shakespeare” of trumpet players. As he’s grown, his reverence for Satchmo’s musical approach and “basic human goodness” has only deepened.

“He’s a genius,” Marsalis said. “He’s the ultimate Horatio Alger story, like a person who really grew up with absolutely nothing and rose to be the most popular person in the world just through the strength and delivery of his message. And that message was the timeless message of: We are all connected in some way, and our mandate is to love one another.”

In late May, Marsalis will be in the Seattle area to support two screenings of the silent film Louis, a fictionalized retelling of Armstrong’s childhood written and directed by Dan Pritzker. Marsalis, who put together the music for Louis, will perform his score live with classical pianist Cecile Licad and a jazz orchestra. The screenings will take place at Port Townsend’s McCurdy Pavillion on May 27 and Seattle’s Paramount Theater on May 28. Notably, these appearances mark the first time in 23 years he’s come to the area without the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

“We did a whole tour on the East Coast and [Pritzker] felt like, ‘Hey, it’s been a while. Let’s see if we can put together a tour on the West Coast and people can see the film live,’” Marsalis told KNKX.

An immersive homage to Pops
Louis, which was shot by the late, Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and originally released in 2010, is set amongst the Storyville brothels, alleys, and cemeteries of early 20th century New Orleans.

The energetic film follows a young Louis and his enthusiasm for the trumpet, which gets him into questionable, often comical, circumstances, particularly after he meets a young single mother and her baby. Along the way, Pritzker highlights additional New Orleans’ cultural icons, including cornetist Buddy Bolden, and classical composer and pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

When Pritzker approached Marsalis to do the score for the film, Marsalis was immediately impressed by the project, which conveys a deep understanding and respect for New Orleans’ cultural history and the roots of jazz.

“I just read the script that he had and when I started to hear about Gottschalk and the stuff he was saying about the music, I mean, when do you ever hear those kinds of things? Neither before or since have I met with a person who talked about the things that are in the film,” Marsalis said.

Marsalis’ score for Louis oscillates between the music of Gottschalk, which Marsalis describes as “Liszt and Chopin mixed with the Caribbean,” and his own spirited original compositions performed by a jazz orchestra. His compositions draw on New Orleans cultural elements like the music of Jelly Roll Morton, a local great regarded as the first true jazz composer; the banjo, a prominent instrument brought over by enslaved Africans; and the bamboula dance, a foundational rhythm that suffuses the city.

“It’s just an interesting intersection of music from that time and music that I had written in our time,” Marsalis said.

Lending Centrum a hand
The show on the Olympic Peninsula is a special one. After the screening and live performance, Marsalis will take the stage at McCurdy Pavilion as the featured artist for the interdisciplinary arts nonprofit Centrum’s Benefit Concert & Gala.

Each year, Centrum provides over $150,000 in scholarships for artists of all ages so they can access Centrum’s programs, including the lauded Jazz Port Townsend workshop, with reduced tuition. This annual event is the single most important source of scholarship funds. For Marsalis, who’s dedicated much his career to jazz education, mentorship, and community work, supporting this effort is a no-brainer.

“I’m in favor of any organizations when they have an impact on the community,” he said, later adding that Centrum’s Jazz Port Townsend creates an environment for learning jazz that is “life changing” for many kids.

Marsalis would know. Many of the kids who attend Jazz Port Townsend are the same ones who participate in the jazz programs at Garfield, Roosevelt, and other local high schools. For more than twenty years, the jazz bands from our region have dominated Jazz at Lincoln Center’s prestigious Essentially Ellington high school band competition.

“My father was a teacher and he was always talking about the music and showing a certain type of love and respect for the creativity of younger people. That’s what I believe in,” Marsalis said.

Jazz is democracy
At the same time, it’s no secret to Marsalis that there are many forces at play today that seek to undermine jazz education as well as the values jazz stands for.

Over the last few years, issues like COVID recovery, state budget deficits, music teacher workforce issues, lack of advocacy, and the perception that music is non-essential learning, have led K-12 schools across the country — including in the Seattle area — to cut their music program budgets and eliminate jazz programs. But Marsalis isn’t balking, and he asserts that parents, students, and community members who care about music education shouldn’t either.

“Agitate, agitate, agitate. You, your parents and everybody has to say, ‘This is important to us. Let’s make this happen.’ And you can only do that with agitation,” Marsalis said.

Marsalis believes that protecting access to jazz education is about more than passing down the wisdom of legends like Louis Armstrong, it’s also about safeguarding our democracy. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission statement reflects this value, stating that through its encouragement of individual expression, finding common ground with others, and resilience in the face of adversity, jazz is “a metaphor for democracy.”

At a time when some experts say U.S. democracy is in decline, Marsalis says uplifting this American music and legacy—through his work at Lincoln Center, and through projects like Louis—matters more than ever.

“The fact that we’re in trouble…part of the reason is because we don’t listen to jazz,” he said. “We listen to mainly commercial products, and those products are not designed to teach you anything mythical about America. It’s just a hustle.”

Luckily, locals get two chances to meaningfully engage with jazz music and history when Marsalis is in town with Louis. And afterwards, you might just bump into him at one of his favorite Seattle pitstops—the Owl N’ Thistle.

“I love it there,” he said. “It’s a soulful place.”

by Alexa Peters
Source: KNKX

Although the benefit concert at McCurdy Pavilion on Tuesday, May 27, will mark Marsalis’ first performance for Centrum, he noted that a number of musicians with whom he’s familiar have taken part in Centrum programs, so he was drawn by the esteem they’d given it.

This concert also marks Marsalis’ first public appearance in the Pacific Northwest in 23 years without the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

Marsalis also acknowledged that he tends to be sparing in providing soundtracks for films, having done so for only six films, besides “Louis,” between 1990-2019.

“It’s not my strongest suit,” Marsalis said of movie soundtracks.

Marsalis nonetheless felt compelled to work on “Louis,” in part due to the rapport he developed with Pritzker, to the extent that Marsalis also wrote, arranged and performed original music for Pritzker’s 2019 film “Bolden,” about historic jazz musician Charles “Buddy” Bolden.

Although “Louis” offers a fictionalized account of a 6-year-old Louis Armstrong in 1907 New Orleans, Anthony Mackie puts in a cameo appearance as Bolden, alongside Jackie Earle Haley as a corrupt judge and Michael Rooker as his strong-arming henchman.

Marsalis explained that he was fascinated by “Louis” as a film that “showed jazz being born,” while also playing with the Charlie Chaplin-esque conventions of the original silent films.

“I love that early era of jazz,” said Marsalis, who credited Pritzker with demonstrating a keen ear for selecting musical pieces to help animate the film’s action. “He has very good musical taste. He’s very discerning. Dan’s creative vision expresses many of my values. I’ve come to trust his taste, and I’m not known for biting my tongue when I disagree with people.”

Marsalis not only appreciates that Pritzker shares his affinity for early 20th century Americana, but the musician also complimented the filmmaker for achieving “a silent film with a modern look,” as well as for demonstrating a considerable knowledge of music history.

“This film is about expressing the American-ness of this music, which still possesses a power and a presence to this day,” Marsalis said. “In one sense, it’s a timeless myth, but it’s also about the myth of New Orleans.”

Although Marsalis has already played the score to “Louis” live during its screenings on the East Coast, he noted that the Centrum benefit concert on May 27 marks the West Coast debut of “Louis” with a live soundtrack, which means the orchestra will remain engaged throughout the film’s 70-minute runtime.

“The whole time the film is playing, the orchestra is concentrating on meeting its marks,” Marsalis said. “It’s not easy work.”

Ultimately, Marsalis hopes films like “Louis,” as well as his own music, can help inspire creativity in other artists, in part by familiarizing them with the historic roots of art forms such as jazz.

Marsalis expressed gratitude to have been part of the communities of jazz and music overall.

“If I can give people an experience that enriches them, then it’s been worth it,” Marsalis said. It’s been a blessing to be able to play for this long, and the best advice I could give to other musicians would be to listen to the person next to you. I believe in Centrum’s mission, so I’m proud to support it.”

What to know:

The Tuesday, May 27, event includes both the 5 p.m. benefit concert and film screening at the McCurdy Pavilion, and the 7:30 p.m. gala dinner and auctions at the Fort Worden Commons.

by
Source: The Leader

We immediately catch up a bit, noting that the last time we spoke — or, more accurately, Zoomed — was right after his “The Ever Fonky Lowdown” album with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra came out in 2020. Of course, Zoom was the standard form of communication back in those days, just months into a COVID-19 pandemic that sent much of the world into lockdown and social distancing mode.

“Well, we’re still here,” the 63-year-old New Orleans native asks. “How you feeling?”

I’m feeling good — and about to feel even better as I get to spend the next 20 minutes chatting with this living jazz legend about his latest endeavor, which, in a way, is also an old endeavor.

The acclaimed trumpeter/composer/bandleader is Zooming into my living room on this particular afternoon to discuss “Louis: A Silent Film,” coming May 24 to Paramount Theatre in Oakland. The show, which is presented by SFJAZZ, features a screening of the 2010 offering “Louis” with live accompaniment from Marsalis, pianist Cecile Licad and an 11-piece jazz ensemble. Showtime is 8 p.m. and tickets are $65-$150, sfjazz.org

The film, which features an original score by Marsalis as well as music from 19th-century New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, tells a fictionalized tale of young Louis Armstrong growing up on the streets of Crescent City in the early days of the 20th century. It’s a silent film that draws heavy inspiration from the works of Charlie Chaplin and features well-known actors Jackie Earle Haley and Michael Rooker.

“Louis” was directed by Dan Pritzker, who also was at the helm for “Bolden,” a film about the legendary Fat City cornetist Buddy Bolden. Marsalis wrote and performed music for “Bolden” as well.

Here’s my chat with Marsalis, who sounded happy to have the opportunity to revisit “Louis” with a West Coast trek that also includes a date on May 25 at Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa (lutherburbankcenter.org).

Q: How did you first get involved with the “Louis” project?

A: Well, Dan (Pritzker) approached me (first) with the script for “Bolden” — talking about the film about Buddy Bolden. Then he said he wanted to make a silent film. He had seen a Charlie Chaplin film with his mother where the score was played by the Chicago Symphony.

When Dan said he wanted to do that, of course, I wanted to do it. I had the same aspirations that he had — like I feel like (silent film) is still a medium that can be very powerful and speak to people.

Q: It’s definitely a powerful medium when done right.

A: I also liked (Dan’s) vision of the music of Gottschalk, the music of Jelly Roll Morton, ragtime, all the kind of music from the mid-1800s to 1900 when jazz was born, when New Orleans was such a major part in the incubation of certain types of American music. And you know (the film) ended up being something that was really interesting to do. I’m happy that we worked together and did it.

Q: This isn’t the first time that you’ve taken the “Louis” show out on the road. You did some dates way back when the film was originally released.

A: We did it only on the East Coast. We didn’t go on the West Coast.

Q: Why did you want to revisit the project now — some 15 years after the film came out?

A: Dan wanted to do it. It was originally his vision and he asked me what would I feel about doing that. Yeah, I thought it would be good to do it because we didn’t play that many shows. And the music is difficult to play, so, for (the musicians), it’s always a challenge. It’s interesting, if you have stuff that’s kind of difficult to play, they (musicians) always want to do it.

Q: Does the difficulty come from having to sync the live score with what’s happening in the film?

A: The challenge for us is not playing with the click track or being in time with the film. It’s just our parts are difficult to play, so that’s the challenge.

Q: Fortunately, you have the great Cecile Licad onstage to handle the Gottschalk piano work.

A: It’s good to hear Cecile play Gottschalk’s music. It’s not a music that is commonly played. It deserves a wider listening just because of his significance to the development of American music.

Q: How much of the project’s draw for you — as a music historian, a New Orleans historian — was the chance to share with people what it was like for Armstrong to grow in your hometown?

A: The film is not really necessarily biographical. But it is a certain type of American history and I think Dan and I don’t both have a kind of love for the incubation period of American music. (The draw) was more to work with him and to realize the vision of it.
Me being from New Orleans, of course, there are all the New Orleans themes — marching band music, ragtime, Jelly Roll, the mythic fabric of the American arts music, including Gottschalk music. It’s important to constantly retell those stories.

Q: Some of the moments in “Louis” are clearly fantasy/dream segments. But how much of the film is based on actual events in the young Armstrong’s life?

A: It’s invented. So, that way, (Dan) didn’t have to deal with people saying, “Well, it wasn’t that. It was like this. That’s not the kind of coronet he played.” So, it’s kind of mythic.

If you look at the themes that it has — the whole kind of juxtaposition of light and dark skin people; brothels, the tradition of prostitution; political corruption; the judge and his position in it; Louis Armstrong and how he’s looking at the world as a kid and what what shaped his kind of understanding and gave his music a certain type of depth and of beauty; and also the way people looked out for one another — it has an ugliness and a beauty in it, side by side. It has a religiosity and decadence.

Q: Right, right. I can see that.

A: The film is not saying a right or a wrong. It’s saying this is the environment at that time — this is Louis Armstrong’s environment — and these are the conclusions he came to. The kind of shining and deeply spiritual nature of his playing let you know what he concluded about being in that type of environment with the political and the sexual corruption and all the different things and all the great music that they played and had.

by Jim Harrington
Source: The Mercury News

It is perfectly logical to assume New Orleans-bred trumpeter and Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz composer Wynton Marsalis grew up as a fan of jazz pioneer and fellow New Orleans trumpeter/composer Armstrong, the subject of the national “Louis” silent-film-with-live-music-tour Marsalis and his 13-piece band are now embarked upon.

Logical, but wrong, since Marsalis’ first band of note as a teenager, The Creators, was a funk and R&B band that catered to young, dance-happy audiences eager to get their groove on.

“I always knew about Armstrong,” said Marsalis, who will perform “Louis” on May 18 at downtown San Diego’s Balboa Theatre.

“But coming up during and after the Civil Rights movement — and the killings of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. — you didn’t look kindly on Armstrong. A lot of things were left out of Black Culture then. A lot of people didn’t really know who he was then and were embarrassed by his antics and by his smiling and grinning.

“I knew about Armstrong because my father taught a history course about him. But it was so antithetical to Malcolm X and the post-Civil Rights movement. The music we were doing in The Creators by The Last Poets, Earth, Wind & Fire and P-Funk, that stuff was very remote from Armstrong.’’

Marsalis was 17 when he began developing an abiding passion for Armstrong, whose profound impact on American music continues to be felt around the world and whose storied legacy Marsalis happily discusses later in this interview.

Stevie Wonder, The Meters
He was similarly enthusiastic recounting his three-year stint as a teenage member of the New Orleans funk band The Creators, whose repertoire included songs by Stevie Wonder. Earth, Wind & Fire, The Commodores, War, Ohio Players and The Meters. The band, whose lineup featured Wynton’s saxophone-playing brother, Branford, also performed songs by the George Clinton-led Parliament-Funkadelic.

“I can still play P-Funk horn parts right now!” Marsalis said, speaking by phone from his home in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

“I wonder if I can still play (Wonder’s) ‘Sir Duke,’ which I was playing when I was 13. Let me see how much I remember. Let’s see.”

Marsalis picked up his trumpet and began playing “Sir Duke’s” snaking horn lines.

“There you go!” he said triumphantly.

Putting down his horn, Marsalis began to sing a snippet of “P-Funk Wants To Get Funked Up,” the opening selection from that band’s landmark mid-1970s album, “Mothership Connection.”

“I want my funk uncut, make my funk the P-Funk, I want to get funked up!” he sang, laughing with delight.

“I can remember some of their horn parts, too,” said Marsalis, who picked up his trumpet again and began playing some brassy bursts.

His palpable zeal for revisiting his funk-fueled teenage musical pursuits will surely come as a surprise to many, or at least to anyone who did not grow up alongside him in New Orleans.

This, after all, is the same Wynton Marsalis who in 1983 — at the age of 22 — became the first artist to ever win Grammy Awards in both jazz and classical music. It was a feat he handily repeated the following year.

In 1997, Marsalis became the first jazz artist to win a Pulitzer Prize for music. That honor was accorded to him for “Blood on the Fields,” his sweeping jazz oratorio, which was inspired equally by slavery and the quest for freedom. It was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center, the New York nonprofit arts organization for which Marsalis has been the artistic director since its inception in 1986.

A champion of jazz as both a form of vital artistic expression and as an exemplar of musical democracy in action, he has not hesitated to voice his opinions about popular culture. When accepting one of his two awards during the 1983 Grammys telecast, he denounced “enforced trends” and “bad taste.”

In a 2018 Facebook post, Marsalis lamented hip-hop’s propensity for “the perpetuation of negative imagery and stereotypes (that) are self-inflicted for a paycheck… At 56, I’m pretty sure I will not be alive when our country and the world (of all races and persuasions) no longer accepts being entertained by the pathology of Black Americans and others who choose to publicly humiliate themselves for the appetites of those who don’t share the same ongoing history and challenges. Over the years, I have come to accept this, but that doesn’t mean I have to like and endorse it. So I don’t.”

His disdain for much (but not all) hip-hop did not prevent Marsalis from rapping on “Where Y’All At,” a song from his 2007 album, “From The Plantation to the Penitentiary.” Set to a snappy New Orleans second-line drum beat, it opens with him declaring:

“You got to speak the language the people are speakin′ / Specially when you see the havoc it’s wreakin′ / Even the rap game started out critiquin’ /Now it’s all about killing and freakin′ / All you ′60s radicals and world beaters / Righteous revolutionaries and Camus readers / Liberal students and equal rights pleaders / What’s goin′ on now that y’all are the leaders?”

Not a ‘jazz nerd’
Marsalis has been the president of the 56-year-old Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation since 2018. He received the National Medal of the Arts In 2005 and has written or co-authored seven books, including 2008’s “Moving To Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life.”

But Marsalis is quick to challenge the long-held contention that he grew up in a bubble as a jazz purist or “jazz nerd,” a point contradicted by his tenure as a teenage trumpeter in the New Orleans funk bands The Creators and Killer Forces & The Crispy Critters.

“Me growing up as a ‘jazz nerd’ is far from the truth, because that didn’t even exist at the time I was growing up,” Marsalis said.

“So few young people were into this music, and I was one of the few saying: ‘You can play real jazz and not this, not funk.’ Of course, cats didn’t want to hear any of that. It was always an uphill battle for jazz. But when you played funk, you didn’t have to fight for it.

“I said if you play funk that doesn’t make you a jazz musician, and I wanted to play jazz. Now, once I started saying that, it became a thing for writers — critics — who wanted to turn jazz into rock or funk. Why can’t jazz be itself? No disrespect to funk, but it’s not jazz.”

But funk is the music Marsalis happily performed for several years in his teens.

“It was just what everybody was doing then and it was fun,” he said “We had a lot of funk bands in New Orleans then. And me and Branford were the youngest musicians on that scene. We played with older musicians in The Creators who were in their late teens and 20s. We did three gigs a week all over the city, proms, weddings, police department talent shows.

“We played at so many dances and we had such a good time. And we played a lot of slow songs, like The Commodores’ ‘Easy’ and Heatwave’s ‘Always and Forever,’ because we wanted girls from our high school to come see us play. In terms of playing and really learning how to play, it wasn’t about that. We did horn parts, dance steps and background vocals, and it was a lot of fun. But nobody in those funk bands was playing (John Coltrane’s jazz classic) ‘Giant Steps’ because nobody knew what that was.”

Marsalis left The Creators when he was 16 to focus on jazz. He was 17 when he began studying classical trumpet in New York at the Juilliard School and 18 when he joined Art Blakey’s fabled band, The Jazz Messengers.

“I was always studying jazz and I was always trying to learn how to play it,” said Marsalis, who has been the director of Juilliard’s Jazz Studies Department since 2014. “I was always playing with older guys in New Orleans. I did weekly gigs there at Tyler’s Beer Garden with guys in their 20s and 30s.”

Marsalis was still in high school when he began his deep dive into Armstrong, a music giant whose peerless trumpet playing and infectious singing earned him a worldwide following and set an enduring standard.

“I was 17 and had a tape of Armstrong’s music,” Marsalis recalled. “My father said I had to learn (Armstrong’s 1938 classic) ‘Jubilee.’ At the time I was learning solos by Freddie Hubbard, complicated things. ‘Jubilee’ was simple — and I couldn’t play it.

“Learning to play it made me understand I really had to study his songs. So, I started learning Armstrong’s music and his style. Being from New Orleans, I was aware of his style when I was young, from marching band and all the experiences he had, but I certainly didn’t know this was something you needed to study.

“Whereas we knew you had to study ‘Giant Steps,’ or Charlie Parker, or a Thelonious Monk song. We didn’t know the history well enough so we felt like Lous Armstrong was fashioned. We had a preconceived notion of him that kept us from appreciating how significant he was then and is now.”

Big-screen tribute
Armstrong died in 1971, shortly after celebrating his 71st birthday. His greatness has been increasingly recognized and celebrated in the decades since then, on recordings and in books and films.

One of those films is “Louis,” the 2010 silent movie that was inspired by Armstrong’s pre-teen years in New Orleans and boasts a soundtrack by Marsalis. Filmed in black and white, the R-rated “Louis” has a quaintly old-fashioned aesthetic. Its antagonist is a Charlie Chaplin-esque villain, Judge Perry, a corrupt White politician running for higher office while trying to hide having fathered a child with a Black New Orleans prostitute.

The cast features Anthony Coleman as the young Armstrong, Shanti Lowry as the prostitute, Jackie Earle Haley, as Judge Perry and Anthony Mackie as Buddy Bolden, who was Armstrong’s jazz forerunner.

Many of the songs heard in the film were composed by Marsalis. He also wrote new arrangements of such gems as Jelly Roll Morton’s “Black Bottom Stomp,” Charles Mingus’s “Boogie Stop Shuffle” and Duke Ellington’s “Happy Go Lucky Local,” along with several pieces by the 19th-century Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

Directed by Dan Pritzker, a former member of the rock band Sonia Dada, “Louis” debuted in 2010. The same year saw Marsalis and his band take to the road to perform the soundtrack live at screenings of the film in theaters across the East Coast, Mexico, Europe and in Havana, Cuba.

When “Louis” screens in San Diego at the historic Balboa Theater, a formed silent movie house, Marsalis and his band will be present but not be on stage.

“We’re going to be performing in the orchestra pit because the focus is on the film, not on us,” he said.

“The score is hard to play! Believe me, we have our hands full performing it. I’m practicing for the tour right now. We have to hit the marks with the film. But because it’s music I wrote, it has room for improvisation. So, we improvise within the structures of the songs.

The band for this year’s “Louis” tour features pianist Manila-born classical piano star Cecile Licad and Marsalis’ youngest brother, Jason, on drums. While the elder Marsalis was not present when “Louis” was shot in New Orleans more than 15 years ago, he immediately recognized each of the locales featured in the film.

“New Orleans is not that big,” he noted, “especially the downtown area.”

Like Armstrong before him, Marsalis has become synonymous with jazz and the trumpet. His schedule of constant touring, recording and advocating for the music he has devoted his life to appears to be virtually nonstop, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Man, my work is such a blessing,” Marsalis said. “For me, my work has been like a calling. I have practiced a lot since i was 12 and I’ve been blessed to have this opportunity. People still come out to support our concerts and that means a lot to me. And I’ve been blessed to play with such great musicians in my bands and in my student groups.

“I am always grateful. And I always tell my students: ‘Be engaged, take yourself seriously and make the right statement for what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it.”

“Louis: A Silent Film with Live Music by Wynton Marsalis and Cecile Licad.”
When: 7 p.m. Sunday, May 18
Where: Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Avenue, Gaslamp Quarter
Tickets: $76.35-$108.05
Online: theconrad.org

by George Varga
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune

As a trumpeter, Marsalis’ playing is as sharp as it’s ever been. He can command the room with an expertly controlled instability, serenading the audience with frenetic New-Orleans-infused grooves. Other moments, he opts to play more to swing styles. At times he dips into his considerable familiarity with classical music, lending a more traditional sound to certain pieces. One can hear echoes of Sweets Edison and Ray Nance in Marsalis’ musicianship. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) was in fine form under his music direction. (Marsalis is also the Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center). Marsalis and the co-music director of the night, Steven Feifke (who also served as the concert’s pianist), used the evening to showcase contemporary composers and their works, fitting them neatly into traditional jazz sensibilities. Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker loom large as influences on Marsalis as a bandleader, and nowhere is that more pronounced than the concert’s opening number, “Philadelphia.”

Named after the home city of its composer, “Philadelphia” is a jaunty tune featuring some energetic bebop-esque horn work and an excellent saxophone solo. There’s a sense of possibility in the piece, evoking that feeling of strolling down a city street on a brisk day, fitting for a late April concert. Another piece of a similar theme is “Revived Mind,” a composition from Korean composer Jihye Lee. The song, inspired by springtime, is perhaps the highlight of the show. It’s a warm piece, full of lush horns and soft woodwinds. The performance masterfully evokes a sense of calmness, a feeling of being in nature. The use of flute in particular adds a lightness that elevates the composition wonderfully. Marsalis and Feifke wisely placed the piece as the last song before the evening’s intermission, furthering that theme of renewal.

“Charles,” written by George DeLancey and named as a tribute to his son, is a more contemplative piece, although not a somber one. Bassist Carlos Henriquez takes an excellent solo, driving the original groove to new and exciting places before bringing it back in line, enabling the rest of the ensemble to come back smoothly before finishing it. Another more contemplative note in the evening is “Ali Dell’Angelo,” composed by Feifke. The work is inspired by the idea of a fallen angel. It seeks to explore that dichotomy, that change, that idea of a fall from grace and becoming something new. Winding piano arpeggios climb into the instrument’s upper ranges as if ascending a mountain before and crashing against the low rumble of the bass, as if to represent up and down, heaven and hell. The composition’s Italian name would translate into English as “angel wings,” appropriate for the epic composition.

Mimi’s March is a lighter piece. Japanese composer Miho Hazama was inspired by the particularly unique gait of a friend’s cat, and the piece thus features a playful bass groove. It’s an incredibly fun work that the orchestra handle beautifully. The piece is intentionally meandering at times, wisely providing space for the individual musicians in the orchestra to throw in their own little flourishes. Hazama herself later made an appearance on stage, much to the crowd’s delight.

Leo Steinriede’s “Blues ‘25,” an aptly-named modern take on the classic 12-bar blues, is a perfect representation of the concert’s theme: the mixing of the contemporary and the traditional. The piece, commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center itself through the Arnhold Innovation Initiative, is fairly straightforward yet no less enjoyable. Notably, drummer Domo Branch gets a chance to shine with an excellent solo and some clever fills.

“Kinetic,” another piece from Feifke, is as lively as the name would suggest. Staccato piano hits bounce off the brass horns’ melodies for a delightfully invigorating number. Frenetic horn solos (including one from Marsalis himself) make this a standout of the evening. The performance keeps the audience on their toes, drawing attention from one musician to the next and to the next, before finishing up with an extended baritone sax solo that drew much applause.

Overall, Contemporary Jazz Masterpieces with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Orchestra is an excellent concert, showcasing fresh works that pay their respects to the classics. In a genre with so many big names that have gone down in history, it’s important to remember that jazz, as Marsalis has demonstrated time and time again, is still evolving, still innovating, and still swinging.

by: Lydia. Rose
Source: BroadwayWorld

“I love coming here,” said Alec Baldwin, as he posed with his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, who was wearing a plunging lilac gown and a cross necklace, on the red carpet at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s annual fund-raising gala, which celebrated Ellington’s 125th birthday.

The couple, who married in 2012, star in a TLC reality TV show, “The Baldwins.” Filmed as Mr. Baldwin faced trial for involuntary manslaughter, it focuses on their hectic family life with seven children, all age 11 and under, and eight pets. A judge dismissed the case in July.

“The kids aren’t necessarily into the music I appreciate,” said Mr. Baldwin, 67, who wore a navy suit and a burgundy button-down. “I like a lot of classical. I love Japanese jazz, too.” (Ms. Baldwin, 41, a fitness expert and podcast host, said she played a lot of Billie Eilish.)

Another jazz fan in the crowd was Michael Imperioli, the “Sopranos” star who recently played Dom Di Grasso, a smooth Hollywood producer, in the second season of “The White Lotus.”

He has not seen the new season yet, he said, but he plans to soon.

“I’m going to sit down and watch the whole thing in two days or something,” he said. “I’ve been binging British detective shows.”

The Baldwins and Mr. Imperioli were among a smattering of celebrities from the film, music and media worlds, including the journalist Joy Reid and Ellington’s granddaughter, Mercedes Ellington. The evening, which was hosted by the actor and comedian Dave Chappelle, honored the philanthropist H.E. Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo and the jazz pianist and composer Toshiko Akiyoshi.

Around 6:45 p.m., attendees began funneling into the theater. In front of the stage were two rows of table seating, topped with bags of popcorn and bottles of wine. The Baldwins shared a table with Chloe Breyer, the executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, and Greg Scholl, the executive director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

As they waited for the concert to begin, which featured the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Ms. Baldwin sipped a glass of red wine, while Mr. Baldwin munched on a bag of popcorn and scrolled through his phone.

Around 7:15 p.m., Mr. Chappelle took the stage.

“Man, you would’ve never thought you’d see me at an event like this, would you?” said Mr. Chappelle, the famously firebrand comedian.

“Don’t worry, no bad words,” he joked. “Just here to help out.”

He then shared a lesser-known part of his biography: Before he was in the stand-up comedy scene, he attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., a public high school with a focus on arts education.

“That school profoundly, profoundly, profoundly changed my life,” said Mr. Chappelle, who is an amateur jazz pianist. “Duke Ellington was a guy who traveled all around the world just based off his talent. And as kids, we knew that it was possible, just because his energy was in the air.”

Though he mostly stuck to the teleprompter, Mr. Chappelle did throw in a few ad-libs. (“You can’t get one of the greatest comedians in the world to just read a teleprompter,” he said.)

He took light aim at President Trump.

“It’s up to us. We got to keep this tradition alive. This is one of the best things we got going in America,” he said. “You see what Trump did at the Kennedy Center? You’re next. He’ll come here, ‘I got to make jazz great again.’ Oh, no! Oh, no!”

Around 9:15 p.m., the members of the orchestra led a second-line procession that snaked through the atrium, as a dozen trumpeters, drummers and saxophonists played “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Afterward, a few hundred dinner guests tucked into plates of roasted branzino, chatting at tables with views of Columbus Circle.

Around 10 p.m., they began filtering down a hallway lined with a metallic gold curtain into Dizzy’s Club, an intimate space with bamboo walls and windows overlooking Central Park.

They danced until after midnight, as the Norman Edwards Jr. Excitement Band played swing standards like “Take the ‘A’ Train,” and the lights of Manhattan twinkled behind them.

“It’s heartening to see so many different generations here,” Ms. Ellington said. “Music is the only thing that’s going to really keep us going. We need it now more than ever.”

by Sarah Bahr
Source: New York Times

The idea of providing live soundtracks to silent films has continued, with several ensembles and individuals providing sound for films by Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and others. A new and ambitious effort of this kind is being undertaken by Wynton Marsalis, in conjunction with Dan Pritzker, writer-director of a film called Louis. Although not a “biopic,” the film, set in New Orleans, is based on the early life of Louis Armstrong. Pritzker and Wynton were also collaborators on the 2019 film Bolden, which I reviewed for this publication (TST, June 2019, “The Syncopated Cinema”).

Louis was actually released in 2010. The film is beautifully photographed in black and white by Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. There are title cards but no spoken dialogue. Marsalis recorded the soundtrack, which included some music he’d previously written and some things he wrote specifically for the film. In a video call I recently held with Marsalis, we discussed the genesis of the project and plans for an upcoming tour.

“He [Pritzker] had taken his mother to see a Charlie Chaplin film,” Marsalis told me, “and he thought it would be hip to do a silent film with music that could span the gamut of what was being played at that time [turn of the 20th century]—Gottschalk music, march music…And all the tributaries to jazz-Ragtime, European parlor tradition, the vernacular tradition.”

Apart from music written by Marsalis, there is a lot of music written by 19th century composer Louis Gottschalk. I asked Marsalis why he used music that was written so long before the early 20th century. “Dan was interested in the progression from Gottschalk to Joplin to Jelly Roll,” Marsalis told me. “In the silent film era, the piano soundtrack was not one style. It could be ‘railroad’ music, diminished chords, arias from operas, western style, pre-stride, whatever it would take to convey the action.”

The Gottschalk material was recorded by classical pianist Cecile Licad. “Licad became involved because she was friends with Pritzer,” Marsalis told me, “And as it turned out, I knew her as well, as we were both signed by CBS Masterworks in the early 1980s and had the same A&R, Christine Reed.”

Marsalis also includes Ellington’s (Black and Tan Fantasy) and (Happy Go Lucky Blues), Morton’s (Black Bottom Stomp) and (New Orleans Bump), Nick LaRocca’s (Tiger Rag), and King Oliver’s (West End Blues) on the soundtrack. Marsalis said: “That’s part of what made it interesting and what makes it interesting to do and to play.” I mentioned that some of the music in chase scenes reminded me of Raymond Scott and Marsalis said: “That’s not purposeful, but I like his music. It’s very colorful. I’m very interested in orchestration.”

“All of the music was put on the film by Dan,” Marsalis said. “He determined how it would flow into the sound track, and he has good taste and understanding of that.”

For this tour, Marsalis has put together a large ensemble, mostly composed of musicians different from those who played on the 2010 score. He acknowledges that performing the music live with the film will be a challenge. “That music was difficult to play in 2010 and it’s still difficult to play with any kind of authority…It’s not easy, but we have the same conductor, Andy Farber, and we have a click track for the drums. We have a way that we worked it out. We’ve all played together and know the styles. We’re gonna make sure we’re on top of it.”

I brought up the question of how Marsalis thought the known facts of Armstrong’s life jibed with how it’s portrayed onscreen. “I feel like we live inside of a mythic framework,” he said. “Like, what did Doc Holliday do? We don’t know what he did. Who was John Henry? I’m sure there was a John Henry, but I don’t know what he did. Now, with Louis, we know more about his life because he wrote about it. But I think that a silent movie that has a poetic take on it that features the music of Gottschalk and Jelly Roll, and, and… all this music people don’t hear in an active context. I was happy to do it.”

As far as future film projects, Marsalis doesn’t see it happening. “That’s not really my thing, to do films. I just wanted to do it with him [Pritzker]. Sometimes when people call me about films, I say, ‘Man, call Terence [Blanchard].’ It’s not really my skill set and I got plenty to do.”

He thinks jazz is very under-represented in film and when I ask him to tell me a film he likes, he’s hard pressed to come up with an answer. “The old ones have a romantic quality to them… A Man Called Adam was pretty good. “[Making a good film about jazz] still remains out there to be done, with people really playing. It needs a combination of intelligence and soul and the wit of jazz musicians-difficult to get it.”

Marsalis has been instrumental in trying to grow the audience for jazz and has been creative in finding new ways to accomplish that. “It’s important for our younger people to know about it. We have a lot of educating to do. And we have to educate ourselves, too.”

The live performance of the complex score to Louis will be a high-wire act. But given the quality and wide experience of the musicians involved, I’d say it will be an act worth catching.

Wynton Marsalis is a world-renowned trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and a leading advocate of American culture. He presently serves as Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School, and President of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation. For more information on the Daniel Pritzker film Louis, please visit wyntonmarsalis.org

by Steve Provizer
Source: Syncopated Times

I needn’t have worried: Jazz at Lincoln Center wasn’t about to present a program of music that isn’t swinging enough to get my foot patting. The evening was put together by pianist and composer Steven Feifke, who, at 33, is by the far the youngest-ever recipient of the Grammy Award for Big Band Jazz and is probably also the youngest to serve as musical director for a program by the JALC Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, who served as co-host.

Then, too, newness was everywhere — there were three new faces in the rhythm section: pianist Adam Birnbaum, drummer Domo Branch, and guitarist James Zito. The reed section is now almost completely young players, with the only greybeard being the formidable Sherman Irby. He now shares the alto solos with Alexa Tarantino, who at 32 is also Mrs. Feifke.

The trombones had two newish players in Nate Jones and Marshall Gilkes, joining Elliot Mason with his familiar amish goatee. Only the trumpets section was entirely made up of Rose Hall stalwarts, with Ryan Kisor, Kenny Rampton, and Marcus Printup in their familiar chairs to the immediate stage left of Mr. Marsalis.

“Overture,” from a larger work called “The Philadelphia Suite” by Joshua Lee, opened the evening. The inspiration was clearly Duke Ellington’s many extended works, especially 1950’s “Harlem,” as well as Benny Carter’s “Kansas City Suite” for Count Basie.

“Overture” used a kind of Ducal form and structure; like nearly everything that followed, it was through-composed, not a repeating cycle of choruses based on familiar standard or blues harmonic patterns, and didn’t use any specifically Duke-ish tonal colors. Yet like Ellington and Carter, it swung like crazy, being essentially a musical depiction (at least to my ears and imagination) of Philadelphia or any big American city waking up in the morning.

Conversely, one piece played near the end of the evening, Leo Steinriede’s “Blues 25,” made a point out of being directly based on the old, reliable basic blues format, but was creative and inspired in its use of that foundation.

I might have thought that the second piece, Helen Sung’s “A Little Bird Watching,” was ornithologically driven, especially in that it opens with an innovative use of the classical technique sometimes known as hocket, which might handily depict canaries and cuckoos chirping back and forth. But it turns out that the piece was inspired by her mentor, a diminutive giant of jazz composition, Jimmy Heath, nicknamed Little Bird for his early allegiance to Charlie Parker.

“Charles,” a dedication by composer George DeLancey to his year-old son, began with cool sonorities that suggest the main title theme from a very hip late 1960s cop show, and gave us a blues-driven trombone solo by Mr. Gilkes and a high-energy trumpet chorus by Mr. Marsallis. Jihye Lee’s “Revived Mind” evidenced a distinctly Asian sensibility that made prominent use of flutes; it could have been a Korean composer’s direct response to Elington’s “Far East Suite.”

The second act was highlighted by a stunning ballad, “Radiant Flower (Zara)” by Xavier Nero, which was a feature for the big-toned tenor saxophone of Abdias Armenteros — warm and romantic in the tradition of Ben Webster. Darcy James Argue supplied “Single Cell Jitterbug,” but to parse the title it was more about dancing than elementary biology, being a catchy and swinging piece.

The host also offered two selections, the biblically-based “Ali Dell’Angelo” in the first act, with a resounding solo by Ms. Tarantino, as well as the evening’s climactic piece, “The Same River,” at the end of the second half. It had a kind of Gospel feel in a distinct 3/4 — marked by hand claps at several points — with Mr. Irby preaching on his alto saxophone. The piece ingeniously whirled and twirled in distinct patterns, never quite repeating itself.

Two other points: In the past, JALC’s presentations of newly written material have been traditionally less popular than its concerts of well-known jazz and songbook standards, but Friday night’s show was packed if not completely sold out. Also, clearly without intending to, the lineup of works presented what amounted to a completely organic demonstration of the virtues of diversity: there were African American, Caucasian, Asian, and Latinx composers, as well as a commendable portion of female writers.

Most of all, there was a significant concentration of that most elusive quality in 21st century jazz, namely youth. When Mr. Steinreider, composer of “Blues ’25,” stood up to take a bow at the end of the evening, we all realized that the title refers if not to his age then probably to the year in which he graduates from the Manhattan School of Music.

by Will Friedwald
Source: New York Sun

Set and costume designer Bunny Christie, musician, composer and educator Wynton Marsalis and pop legend Lulu will be recognised at RCS’s graduation on Thursday 3 July.

They’ll join around 300 students who will graduate across music, drama, dance, production, film and education at Scotland’s national conservatoire, one of the world’s top destinations to study the performing arts. In March, RCS retained its sixth place in the prestigious QS World University Rankings by Subject, the ninth time it has been placed in the top ten since the ranking was established in 2016.

Professor Jeffrey Sharkey, Principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, said: “Honorary doctorates are awarded to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to their respective fields and our cultural landscape, and Bunny Christie, Lulu, and Wynton Marsalis exemplify this at the highest level.

“Bunny Christie’s groundbreaking set and costume designs have elevated theatrical storytelling, Lulu has redefined what it means to be a performer – from timeless hits to her versatility across music, stage and television – and Wynton Marsalis’s mastery and advocacy for jazz, classical and music education have cemented his legacy as one of the world’s great musical ambassadors.

“We’re looking forward to welcoming them to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in July, where we’ll celebrate our graduating class of 2025.”

Bunny Christie OBE is a multi-award-winning set and costume designer whose creative vision has transformed the world’s most celebrated theatre productions. According to The Guardian, Bunny ‘doesn’t design stage sets. She creates worlds.’

With two Tony Awards and four Olivier Awards under her belt, Christie made history as the first woman to win the Olivier Award for Best Design and was also the first woman to receive the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Designer.

Born and raised in St Andrews, she has a long relationship with the National Theatre, designing in all its theatre spaces and devising shows at the NT Studio. Her work at the NT covers production and costume design for many of the classics and new plays.

One of her most celebrated designs, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, premiered at the National Theatre before transferring to the West End and Broadway, winning widespread acclaim, and completing UK, US and East Asian tours. She also devised a small-scale touring version of Curious Incident, giving many students their first experience of live theatre and supporting the teaching of drama in schools.

Recent projects include Tammy Faye and Company in London and New York, and Guys and Dolls and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at London’s Bridge Theatre.

Christie’s influence extends beyond individual productions – her work is showcased in the Museum of Broadway in New York and the V&A in London and Dundee. She’s also a passionate advocate for emerging designers, and she initiated the National Theatre Design Bursary, providing young talents with financial support and experience working on large-scale productions.

Commenting on her honorary doctorate, Bunny Christie said: “As a production designer, born in Scotland, I am delighted to accept an honorary doctorate in production from the world-renowned Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which trains the young designers of the future who join the UK’s hugely successful and profitable, visual and creative industries.”

Glasgow-born Lulu has spent over sixty years in the spotlight with a career that is something to Shout about. From blasting on to the pop scene at 15 to being crowned a Eurovision winner, a Bond theme singer (The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974) and working with everyone from David Bowie, Tina Turner and Paul McCartney to Chaka Khan, Elton John and Take That, she’s still far from slowing down.

Transcending generations, Lulu’s impressive career of global success includes releasing 1967’s biggest-selling record in the US, To Sir with Love, and being one of the first pop artists to perform behind the Iron Curtain. Her talent doesn’t stop at just music. Last year, she received the award for Best Supporting Actress at the National Film Awards for her role in movie Arthur’s Whisky, one of several acting credits.

She’s still wowing audiences live on stage. In 2024, she completed a Glastonbury festival set as well as her sold-out Champagne for Lulu tour – her last ever – which was extended due to phenomenal demand. The Grammy Award-winner has a string of performances lined up this year, including Mighty Hoopla, Cheltenham Jazz Festival and HebCelt Festival in the Outer Hebrides.

Lulu launched her first ever podcast Turning Points in February, where she chats to famous faces – including John Legend, Boy George and Brian Cox – about the pivotal moments that have shaped their lives. She’s also recently launched her own charitable fund, Lulu’s Mental Health Trust and, later this year, she’ll release a memoir, which is set to see her at her most honest yet.

“I’m so honoured to be nominated for an honorary doctorate and I’m so excited to join students for their summer graduation,” said Lulu.

“The performing arts are so vital to our culture and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is a fabulous institution. I can’t wait to celebrate with everyone!”

Wynton Marsalis is an internationally acclaimed trumpeter, composer, bandleader, educator and a leading advocate of American culture, widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in jazz.

He is the world’s first jazz artist to perform and compose across the full jazz spectrum, from its New Orleans roots to bebop to modern jazz. By creating and performing an expansive range of new jazz and classical music for ensembles ranging from quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras, tap dance to ballet, Marsalis has expanded the vocabulary for jazz and created a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers.

As Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, he has cultivated an institution that uplifts jazz as an essential – and distinctly American – art form. Under Marsalis’ direction, Jazz at Lincoln Center opened Frederick P. Rose Hall in 2004, the world’s first performance, broadcast and education facility dedicated to jazz.

Beyond performance and artistic leadership, Marsalis has devoted his career to music education, mentoring generations of musicians and leading initiatives to bring jazz to global audiences. His impact has been recognised with numerous honours, including the National Medal of Arts, France’s Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and Japan’s Praemium Imperiale.

Marsalis believes music has the power to elevate our quality of life and the quality of human engagement for individuals, social networks and cultural institutions throughout the world.

Three ceremonies will take place on Thursday 3 July which will be livestreamed on the RCS graduation website

The piece, dating from 2009, isn’t brand-new, nor is this its first recording: Cristian Măcelaru and The Philadelphia Orchestra put out a digital release four years ago on Blue Engine Records, the in-house label for Jazz at Lincoln Center, where Marsalis is managing and artistic director. But the Detroit performance is the first to be issued on physical CDs.

As is typical of Marsalis’s four “symphonies” (they’re more like suites), this work is outsized in length (just over an hour), expanded in structure (seven movements), and omnivorous in its mission to include just about every influence that its composer has ever acknowledged. The score is sort of a pocket history of jazz dressed up in symphonic garb, with the traditional 12-bar blues sequence (used in thousands of songs and jams) running as an undercurrent through much of the piece. Wynton being Wynton, the Blues Symphony stops short of developments in jazz around 1965 or so.

The opening section, “Born in Hope,” begins with a fife-and-drum intro, marching from silence into the concert hall, as it were. Soon, the 12-bar blues gradually emerges, and the orchestra starts to work out the sequence, getting louder and rowdier before the parade passes out of earshot. The blues structures in “Swimming in Sorrow” are fainter, but they’re there if you listen hard. The DSO winds and brass freely wail within the confines of Marsalis’s writing, the clarinet glissandos harkening back to the famous first measures of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

“Reconstruction Rag” opens with fractured ragtime syncopations giving way to New Orleans contrapuntal maneuvers and orchestral bombast. “Southwestern Shakedown” starts out coyly before the blues rears its head — the loping rhythms evoking cowboys, a train — and there are dizzying string passages that the DSO handles pretty well. The group even swings.

“Big City Breaks” adopts a tough, broken-up swing rhythm, with dizzying swirls in the trumpet section this time. The sixth movement incorporates the Latin American element — what pianist Jelly Roll Morton called the “Spanish tinge” — starting with a deliberately paced Cuban danzón, joined by a full-blast mambo, and concluding with a complicated scherzo-like Brazilian samba. The finale scampers around like mad, this “Dialogue in Democracy” gone berserk, interrupted by discordant screams before the running pace restarts.

Bignamini succeeds in showcasing the DSO’s agility, versatility, and fire with this difficult, ceaselessly eclectic piece. Together, they make a spirited case for what Marsalis now calls his Symphony No. 2, just another notch in a belt that, along with his other symphonies, is said to include three concertos, 11 ballets, 13 suites, and — would you believe — 600 songs. Given this and all of his other performing, educational, and administrative activities, Marsalis’s work ethic is beyond incredible.

by Richard S. Ginell
Source: SF Classical Voice

Featuring past and current members of the peerless Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Essentially Ellington: The JLCO Recordings, 1999-2025 is a 166-track collection of inspired performances of seminal compositions and arrangements by jazz giants such as Duke Ellington, Benny Carter, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, and many more. The anthology is the only collection to feature all the exceptional musicians who have performed in the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra since 1999.

Essentially Ellington: The JLCO Recordings, 1999-2025 will be available on all digital streaming platforms on April 30, 2025. For more information and to pre-save, visit: https://orcd.co/ee

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival is dedicated to transcribing, preserving, and distributing the music of canonic jazz composers to aspiring musicians. Each year, the world-class Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis records the compositions that are newly enshrined in the EE library so that high school musicians all over the globe can hear what these classic songs sound like in a cutting-edge context.

Essentially Ellington: The JLCO Recordings, 1999-2025 stands as an essential document of American music and a powerful reminder of why Essentially Ellington—Jazz at Lincoln Center’s flagship educational initiative—is imperative in continuing to inspire thousands of students each year to discover the wonder of jazz.

The release of Essentially Ellington: The JLCO Recordings, 1999-2025 is the latest step in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s efforts to expand the EE program, in celebration of the program’s 30th anniversary. For the first time, Jazz at Lincoln Center has doubled the number of bands, from 15 to 30, selected to compete in the finals. A three-day competition in years past, the 2025 Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival (5/7-5/11) will take place over five days, which will include two rounds of competition taking place on two stages, Rose Theater and the Appel Room. The final concert and awards ceremony will be held on May 11 at the Metropolitan Opera House, located at 30 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY. This release is a crucial element of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s plans to expand this unique high school arts education program which has impacted thousands of students, band directors, and the worldwide Essentially Ellington community throughout its 30-year history.

ABOUT ESSENTIALLY ELLINGTON:
One of the most innovative education events in the world, the Essentially Ellington program and resources for students and band directors are free of charge and aim to elevate musicianship, broaden perspectives, and inspire performance through the music of jazz icon Duke Ellington.

The program aims to promote appreciation for jazz music and American vernacular music and has served as a major talent incubator for many alumni who have gone on to form a new generation of professional musicians band directors, and industry figures including Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra musicians Obed Calvaire, Carlos Henriquez, Alexa Tarantino, GRAMMY Award winner Samara Joy, “Saturday Night Live” band member Summer Camargo, and renowned musicians Aaron Diehl, Tatum Greenblatt, Chris Lewis, Riley Mulherkar, Philip Norris, among many more.

Since its inception in 1987, Jazz at Lincoln Center has produced an extensive range of jazz educational and advocacy programs for all ages. For the 30th year, the organization’s Essentially Ellington program spreads the message of Duke Ellington’s music, leadership, and collective orientation, providing high school ensembles with free transcriptions of original Duke Ellington recordings – accompanied by rehearsal guides, original recordings, professional instruction, and more – to thousands of schools and community bands in 58 countries. More than 7,000 high school bands have benefitted from free charts and resources. The multi-day festival provides students access to workshops, jam sessions, rehearsals, and performances.

ABOUT BLUE ENGINE RECORDS:
Blue Engine Records, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s platform that makes its vast archive of recorded concerts available to jazz audiences everywhere, launched on June 30, 2015. Blue Engine Records releases new studio and live recordings as well as archival recordings from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s performance history that date back to 1987 and are part of the R. Theodore Ammon Archives and Music Library. Since the institution’s founding in 1987, each year’s programming is conceived and developed by Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis with a vision toward building a comprehensive library of iconic and wide-ranging compositions that, taken together, make up a canon of music. These archives include accurate, complete charts for the compositions – both old and new – performed each season. Coupled with consistently well-executed and recorded music performed by Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, this archive has grown to include thousands of songs from hundreds of concert dates. The launch of Blue Engine aligns with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s efforts to cultivate existing jazz fans worldwide and turn new audiences on to jazz. For more information on Blue Engine Records, visit blueenginerecords.org

Essentially Ellington: The JLCO Recordings, 1999-2025

TRACKLIST:

1999
1. Launching Pad
2. Main Stem
3. Mood Indigo
4. Never No Lament (Don’t Get Around Much Anymore)
5. Oclupaca (from Latin American Suite)
6. Rockabye River
7. Portrait of Louis Armstrong (from New Orleans Suite) (1999)
8. Sophisticated Lady (1999)

2000
9. Anitra’s Dance (from Peer Gynt Suite)
10. Concerto for Cootie (2000)
11. Perdido (2000)
12. The Mooche (2000)
13. The Peanut Vendor
14. The Shepherd (Who Looks Over the Night Flock)
15. Star-Crossed Lovers (from Such Sweet Thunder)

2001
16. Blue Cellophane
17. Blue Feeling
18. I Let a Song Go Out Of My Heart
19. Pyramid
20. Rocks in My Bed
21. Rumpus in Richmond
22. Almost Cried (from Anatomy of a Murder)
23. Tutti for Cootie

2002
24. All Heart
25. It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)
26. Raincheck
27. Such Sweet Thunder
28. Sultry Sunset
29. The Eighth Veil
30. Things Ain’t What They Used to Be
31. Zweet Zurzday

2003
32. Caravan (2003)
33. Harlem Airshaft (2003)
34. I’ve Just Seen Her
35. Jump for Joy
36. Ko-Ko
37. Kinda Dukish / Rockin’ In Rhythm

2004
38. Bli-Blip
39. Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue
40. Jack the Bear
41. Stompy Jones
42. Rhapsody in Blue
43. Sugar Rum Cherry

2005
44. Happy-Go-Lucky Local
45. I Didn’t Know About You
46. Isfahan (2005)
47. Purple Gazelle
48. Ring Dem Bells
49. V.I.P.‘s Boogie

2006
50. Across the Track Blues
51. All Too Soon
52. Idiom ’59 – Part II
53. Braggin’ in Brass
54. I’m Just a Lucky So and So
55. Latin American Sunshine (from Latin American Suite)

2007
56. Flaming Sword
57. Jumpin Punkins
58. Old Man Blues
59. Joe Avery’s Blues
60. Sophisticated Lady (2007)
61. C Jam Blues

2008
62. Blue Serge
63. Jam-A-Ditty
64. Theme (from The Asphalt Jungle)
65. The Mooche (2008)
66. Don’t Get Around Much Anymore
67. Blue Ramble

2009
68. Again and Again
69. Jeep’s Blues
70. Moon Over Cuba
71. Movin Uptown
72. Perdido (2009)
73. Symphony in Riffs

2011
74. Tippin’ on the Q.T.
75. Concerto for Cootie (2011)
76. Rockin’ in Rhythm (2011)
77. Portrait of Louis Armstrong (from New Orleans Suite) (2011)
78. Black and Tan Fantasy
79. Every Day (I Have the Blues)

2013
80. Royal Garden Blues
81. Echoes of Harlem (2013)
82. Bonga
83. Lightnin’
84. Blood Count
85. The Second Line (from New Orleans Suite)

2014
86. Chinoiserie (from The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse)
87. Dissonance in Blues
88. Teri
89. Uptown Downbeat
90. Perdido (2014)
91. Flirtibird
92. I Like the Sunset (from The Liberian Suite)
93. Nancy Jo

2015
94. Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies
95. Brasilliance
96. Chelsea Bridge
97. Cotton Club Stomp
98. Memphis Blues
99. Total Jazz

2016
100. Magnolias Dripping with Molasses
101. Down South Camp Meeting
102. Laura
103. Christopher Columbus
104. St. Louis Blues
105. Blue Goose

2017
106. Carnegie Blues
107. So Easy
108. Sugar Hill Penthouse
109. Stay On It
110. If You Could See Me Now
111. Dameron Stomp
112. Bojangles
113. East St. Louis Toodle-oo

2018
114. Banquet Scene (from Timon of Athens)
115. Blue Minor
116. Harlem Congo
117. I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But the Blues
118. Lindy Hopper’s Delight
119. Liza (All the Clouds’ll Roll Away)
120. Ready, Go!
121. The Sheik of Araby

2019
122. Afro-Bossa (Bula)
123. Blues to Be There
124. Bugle Call Rag
125. Little Karin
126. Solid Old Man
127. Stablemates
128. Straw Boss
129. Whisper Not

2021
130. Caravan (2021)
131. Cotton Tail
132. Harlem Airshaft (2021)
133. I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)
134. Isfahan (2021)
135. Rockin’ in Rhythm

2022
136. Black Butterfly
137. Blue and Sentimental
138. Trombonio-Bustoso-Issimo (aka “Trombone Buster”)
139. Good Morning Blues
140. Blue Room
141. Topsy

2023
142. Blues a la Machito
143. Chloe
144. Congo Mulence
145. Fancy Dan
146. Kenya
147. Oyeme
148. Portrait of Sidney Bechet
149. Just Scratchin’ the Surface

2024
150. Addi
151. Boo Dah
152. Exposition Swing
153. The Giddybug Gallop
154. Golden Cress
155. Miss Lucy
156. Rent Party Blues
157. Silk Lace

2025
158. Aristocracy à la Jean Lafitte (from New Orleans Suite)
159. Black Beauty
160. Blues for New Orleans (from New Orleans Suite)
161. Elegy to a Man
162. Mullenium
163. The Opener
164. Thruway
165. Thanks for the Beautiful Land on the Delta (from New Orleans Suite)
166. What Am I Here For?

Trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, who is currently the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, is rarely not in motion. Luckily, The Dam Yankee podcast, in partnership with NL Times, caught the living jazz legend after his sold-out performances with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Marsalis shared his thoughts about growing up in the culture of jazz, gaining the approval from his father, who was a storied jazz musician himself, his enduring career, and his thoughts on racial identity in America.

From his vantage point in the back row of his orchestra, Marsalis could see each of the 46 classical music composers whose name adorn the walls and balcony of the Concertgebouw’s main hall, including Mozart, Chopin, Mahler and Tschaikovsky. He can discuss any of them as easily as any jazz musician, like the late trumpet player Chet Baker, who died in Amsterdam just a few years after Marsalis first visited the Netherlands.

He’s been performing at the famous North Sea Jazz festival since 1980, just four years after its inception. From 1981 to date, Marsalis has performed 4,777 concerts in 849 distinct cities and 64 countries around the world.

Dam Yankee: What was it like having a father that was so deeply involved in jazz music?

Wynton Marsalis: I remember my daddy came to play with our funk band one night. We played a song by the Crusaders called “Keep That Same Old Feeling.” We were playing a high school dance. The other cats in the band knew my daddy played, but not how seriously. I asked them to bring my daddy up.

Our other trumpet player was a guy named John Roche, we called him Lebo. He said, “Man, you can’t call your daddy up on this tune. What is he gonna do when we get to the middle section?” I said, “ My daddy is gonna hear it!”

I knew he was going to play without even knowing the music, because my dad had real good ears. So, we played that song through one time. Lebo had never heard stuff that came out of the bebop language, right? He didn’t know how a jazz musician could play. Man, when my father finished playing, Lebo looked at me like, “Damn, man, what was that?” He started to try to sing the notes.

That’s why my father was so cool. He came up and he played with us. He didn’t care if we were making money or how many of us there were. He played and he supported what we were doing.

DY: Did you grow up playing jazz?

WM: I grew up in the culture of jazz, even though I was playing pop music. I loved jazz, but it was hard to learn how to play it. Even with my father being who he was, it’s not what our generation did. We played funk tunes and said it was jazz. But whenever we had to play with the older generation, man, it was like two struggles. We couldn’t play jazz and they couldn’t play funk.

So they’d be trying to play jazz funk. They sounded terrible. And we’d be trying to play jazz and we would sound terrible. But we were younger, so we had the cache of youth. Everyone was talking about me as this trumpet player from New Orleans. I had an incredible buzz coming to New York for somebody that nobody knew or ever heard.

DY: Was there a specific moment when you felt like your father believed you could play well?

WM: No, I don’t think that moment ever came. But my father was proud. He knew that I had the courage to say the stuff people were saying privately in public and accept whatever came with it. When you’re in a philosophical system that is crushing you all the time in thousands of little ways.

You are being used, not as the mainstream, but as the cantilever or the opposition party. You’re the minority. I just always wondered how could I be considered a minority in my own country? I’m not a minority.

We would sit in classrooms learning the history that did not rhyme with our experience. And we were forced to always take the position of a fool and to act not in our own best interest. If you act in your own best interests, you’re always seen as subversive. It’s kind of like a Black thing, but it wasn’t subversive to me.

And when Martin Luther King got killed, we were integrated into a school. That was rough. The roughest part of it was that you were always put under pressure to change your identity, to go with the national story that cast you in a negative light. So you had to fight that all the time. We had more of a voice in that time than a lot of people in those positions around the world have.

Listen to this entire episode of Dam Yankee wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the full videos on YouTube. Later in the episode, he goes on to discuss his experiences with Alvin Ailey, his incredibly talented family, and universal humanism.

Marsalis will be playing in Vienna and Budapest this week before returning to play in the United States. Tickets for all his shows can be purchased for various prices depending on seating and venue.

Chappelle, alumnus of Washington, D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts, has a long connection to the music. A jazz fan who cites Thelonious Monk as one of his favorite musicians, Chappelle is an amateur jazz pianist and has appeared at jazz festivals and clubs throughout the years.

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Gala concert will be anchored by the peerless Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Special guests include members of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, drummer Jeff Hamilton, flautist Baqir Abbas, and vocalist Kate Kortum, alongside the talented alumni of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s signature education program, Essentially Ellington, as well as rising stars in the organization’s youth programs. Three decades of excellence in jazz education will share the bandstand, all rooted in the music of Duke Ellington.

The 2025 Ed Bradley Award for Leadership in Jazz will be awarded to H. E. Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo, Founder of Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation and Founder and Artistic Director of Abu Dhabi Festival. The 2025 Artistic Achievement Award will be awarded to Toshiko Akiyoshi, pianist, and monumental jazz composer.

Jazz at Lincoln Center also announced new international awards to honor individuals who have built organizations that have greatly impacted their jazz communities. The inaugural recipients are Greg Quigley of the Jazz Music Institute (JMI) in Brisbane, Australia; and Maribel Torre and Eugenio Elias of De Quinta Producciones in Mexico City, Mexico.

In 1996, Greg Quigley founded JMI, a private higher education provider based in Brisbane, Australia that delivers a range of courses in jazz performance, and also hosts Essentially Ellington Down Under. This award will be presented by JLCO trombonist and Jazz Houston founder Vincent Gardner.

Maribel Torre and Eugenio Elias of De Quinta Producciones in Mexico City, Mexico have been dedicated jazz presenters for many years. For over a decade, they have hosted the JALC-curated New York Jazz All Stars series and bring nine bands to tour the country each year. In addition to producing visiting artists’ performances, De Quinta Producciones’s work offers educational programs and master classes that impact thousands of students while engaging new audiences. This award will be presented by JLCO saxophonist Alexa Tarantino and bassist Russell Hall.

Following the Gala concert, the celebration continues with a festive dinner and dancing in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Ertegun Atrium and sky-lined Appel Room. The evening culminates in an after-party at Dizzy’s Club featuring the Norman Edwards Excitement Band.

Gala ticket prices begin at $1,750; table prices, $35,000. For tickets, please contact the Jazz at Lincoln Center Events Office at 212-245-6570 or jalcgala@jazz.org. For more information, visit jazz.org/gala.

A limited number of concert-only tickets at $150 to $750 are available for purchase at jazz.org 24 hours a day or by calling Center Charge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 1:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, Ground Floor. Box office hours are Tuesday-Sunday: 10:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m. (or 30 minutes past curtain). On Wednesdays, prior to a Rose theater concert, the Box Office will open at 10 a.m.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Gala co-chairs include Dr. Donna Astion and Michael Fricklas, Clarence Otis, and Beth Chartoff Spector and honorary co-chair, Mercedes Ellington.

ABOUT DAVE CHAPPELLE
Dave Chappelle is an award-winning American comedian, actor, screenwriter, and producer widely recognized as one of the most influential entertainers of his generation. He is the 2019 recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and the 2025 NAACP President’s Award. Chappelle’s work in television and film includes his groundbreaking sketch comedy series “Chappelle’s Show,” which became the best-selling TV show in DVD history, multiple Netflix comedy specials, and memorable guest appearances on “Saturday Night Live.” He has earned five Emmy Awards, including three for his Netflix specials and two for hosting “Saturday Night Live” (2017, 2021), where his most recent 17-minute monologue stands as the longest in the show’s 50-year history. Chappelle has won six Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album, including his most recent for “The Dreamer” (2025).

Thank you to Rosenthal Wine Merchant for donating wines for the evening.

A very special thanks to Jody and John Arnhold for their extraordinary support of Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. We proudly recognize leadership support from Dalio Philanthropies;

Howard Gilman Foundation, Inc.; Mellody Hobson and George Lucas;

Michele and Mark Mandel; Simon Family Foundation; and the Zou Family Fund.

Major support is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Angela and Robert Kissane; Manitou Fund; the Ambrose Monell Foundation; the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; and Seedlings Foundation.

Generous support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Jazz at Lincoln Center proudly acknowledges its 2024-25 season partner: Bloomberg Philanthropies

Leadership support for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s concert season is provided by Lynne and Richard Pasculano.

Contemporary Jazz Masterpieces takes listeners on a thrilling ride through works composed and orchestrated by composers and big band leaders of today, including Miho Hazama, Darcy James Argue, Helen Sung, and Jihye Lee. This concert will also feature newly commissioned works by George DeLancey, Leo Steinriede, and Steven Feifke — works that reflect the depth and breadth of the big band tradition. With music direction by Wynton Marsalis and Steven Feifke, expect an evening of fresh takes and exploratory sounds from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.

Each night, guests are invited to arrive at 6:30 p.m. ET for a pre-concert discussion, led by one of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s distinguished scholars, offering deeper insight into the performance to come. Seating is based on a first-come, first-served basis, and the discussion takes place in the Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio at Frederick P. Rose Hall.

Rose Theater is located in Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, at Broadway 60th Street in New York City. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit jazz.org

Ticket Information
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2024-25 season concerts and events take place at Frederick P. Rose Hall, located on Broadway at 60th Street in New York, NY.
The full concert schedule is available on jazz.org/24-25

Ticket prices for Rose Theater performances start at $30.00. Ticket prices for The Appel Room start at $45 and Dizzy’s Club start at $20.00.

(*) Please note that a $5.00 Jazz at Lincoln Center Facility Fee applies to all ticket purchases, except for $10 Hot Seats. A $7 handling fee also applies when purchasing tickets from CenterCharge or when purchasing tickets online via jazz.org. All single tickets for Rose Theater can be purchased through jazz.org 24 hours a day or through CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, Ground Floor.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office hours are:

Tuesday-Sunday: 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Monday: Closed
Open an additional half-hour after the scheduled start time of ticketed performances.
On Wednesdays before a Rose theater concert, the Box Office will open at 10 a.m. to sell Hot Seats.

There were fine soloists too, with guitarist Ezra Moran outstanding. The final ‘Jackson County Jubilee’ from Benny Carter’s Kansas City Suite (written for Basie) was a tour-de-force, and tribute to the hard work of director Tatum Greenblatt and his young players, whose grins were as wide as those of the audience as their show ended.

In the hall, Wynton’s septet kicked off the first movement of the suite ‘Be Present’. Marsalis took the opening energetic solo, ripping across the range of the trumpet, before swapping phrases with Alexa Tarantino’s alto sax. After the elegant piano of Isiah J Thompson, there were more exchanges between Chris Crenshaw’s trombone and Chris Lewis’s tenor. This set the mood, with Wynton tactfully reminding us that the suite’s messages were particularly relevant in present times. The highlight movements were ‘Sloganize, Patronize, Realize, Revolutionize’, with some almost abstract free phrasing from Tarantino, before Crenshaw picked up the rhythmic feel; and ‘Ballot Box Bounce’ with a long muted solo from Wynton at breakneck speed.

The final full band set covered varied styles — Marcus Printup’s ‘Jojo’s Mojo’, with whistle and shouted commands, nodded towards the Art Ensemble of Chicago, but the band also drew material from Eddie Sauter and Thelonious Monk and made it their own, notably the wonderful textures on Monk’s ‘Light Blue’. The concert ended with UK-based players joining the band: pianist Joe Webb, bassist Will Sach and tenorist Ruben Fox. Their energy matched that of the orchestra, the audience rising to its feet after an uplifting ‘Tenor Madness’ finale.

by Alyn Shipton
Jazzwise Magazine”:https://www.jazzwise.com/review/article/wynton-marsalis-and-j-lco-dazzle-with-democracy-suite-at-barbican

Trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO), has been at the forefront of preserving the legacy of the big band jazz, whose antecedents over the years have included the orchestras of Duke Ellington, Woody Shaw, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie.

This past Sunday, as part of a three-day Barbican residency, Marsalis presented the European Premiere of The Democracy! Suite, composed during the coronavirus lockdown.

Marsalis and septet performed selected compositions of the suite, allowing the spotlight to shine on Carlos Henriques’ taut bass lines, Isaiah Thompson’s dexterous piano flourishes, Alexa Tarantino’s assertive air on alto saxophone and flute (especially on “Ballot Box Bounce”) and tenor saxophonist Chris Lewis, who sounded like a young Joe Henderson during his solos.

The Democracy! Suite, poses socio-political questions couched in the language of traditional jazz. As Marsalis has stated, “The question that confronts us right now as a nation is, ‘Do we want to find a better way?’”.

The suite is as soulful as it is urgent and irrepressible, taking us to the Louisiana bayous and revisiting the birthplace of jazz in Congo Square. Half hymn and half second-line shuffle “That’s When All Will See”, featured drummer Obed Calvaire’s infectious tambourine playing.

The second half of the evening saw the full orchestra in all of its glory with Carlos Henriquez’s Bodegas Groove, (a hip-swaying bougaloo number recently featured on his A Nuyorical Tale album) and alto saxophonist/flautist Sherman Irby’s imaginative piece, Musings of Cosmic Stuff.

Notable solos came from tenor saxophonist Abdias Armenteros, trombonist Eliot Mason, trumpeters Kenny Rampton and Ryan Kisor and trombonist Chris Crenshaw.

The encore piece, Sonny Rollins’ “Tenor Madness”, saw superb ensemble support and soloing from UK-based guest musicians Joe Webb (piano), bassist Will Sach and tenor saxist Ruben Fox. Indeed, the three tenor line-up (Ruben Fox, Chris Lewis and Abdias Armenteros) recalled the storied tenor cutting sessions of Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon.

All in all the concert was a great homage to the jazz tradition.

Set 1 – Septet

Wynton Marsalis, trumpet
Chris Crenshaw, trombone
Chris Lewis, saxophones
Alexa Tarantino, saxophones
Isaiah J. Thompson, piano
Carlos Henriquez, bass
Obed Calvaire, drums

Setlist:

Part I, Be Present
Part II, Sloganize, Patronize, Realize, Revolutionize (Black Lives Matters)
Part III, Ballot Box Bounce
Part V, Deeper Than Dreams
Part VII, It Come ‘Round ‘Gin
Part VIII, That’s When All Will See

Set 2 – Full band

Personnel:

Trumpets: Wynton Marsalis, Ryan Kisor, Marcus Printup, Kenny Rampton
Trombones: Chris Crenshaw, Vincent Gardner, Elliot Mason, trombone
Reeds: Sherman Irby, Alexa Tarantino, Chris Lewis, Abdias Armenteros, Paul Nedzela

Piano: Isaiah J. Thompson
Bass: Carlos Henriquez
Drums: Obed Calvaire

Guests: Joe Webb, piano. Will Sach, bass. Ruben Fox, saxophone

Setlist:

Jo Jo’s Mojo – Marcus Printup
The Maid with the Flaccid Air – Eddie Sauter
Bodegas Groove – Carlos Henriquez
Light Blue – Thelonious Monk arr. Vincent Gardner
Musings of Cosmic Stuff + Mv. V Waltz of the Silver River – Sherman Irby
San Sue Strut (with guests)

Encore: Tenor Madness – Sonny Rollins (with guests)

by John Stevenson
Source: UK.Jazznews

Right at the start, clarinettists Sherman Irby and Alexa Tarantino blew us away in “The Mooch”. Trumpet solos flamed; the saxophones had their moment in the sun for the last of what, alas, were a mere four numbers by the Duke, “Big Fat Alice’s Blues”. Marsalis’s introductions were charming and passionately well informed: what a tradition this group has carried for nearly 40 years. Veterans and young ones, working at the highest level, share a palpable delight in their music-making.

As they so clearly did in Marsalis’s Fourth Symphony, though their place within the body of the London Symphony Orchestra meant that part of the visual pleasure was lost to those of us sitting further down in the stalls. It was, though, a joy to see Antonio Pappano’s mobile face and body matched to precise conducting gestures. He clearly knows every unexpected accent, every dynamic in what must be a difficult work to energise throughout. It starts compellingly. Halfway through the first movement, depicting the nervous energy of NYC, the big sounds begin to diminish. Contrast, you think. Sadly, not for long; and while the ensuing dance, “The Big Show”, moves more to the direction of Broadway, it’s essentially more of the same.

“Lost in Sight (Post-Pastoral)”, begins with desperately-needed introspection, with Marsalis’s intention being to connect New York’s homeless with the legacy of slavery. Is it possible that we’re going to get the kind of contrasts which make such a striking impression – along with ideas of greater substance – in Howard Brubeck’s Dialogues for jazz combo and orchestra?

No; ants get back into pants all too quickly. The writing for woodwind and semi-fugue towards the end are perhaps the most distinctive part of the “Symphony”, but then we go back into what feels like AI territory and remain there until the improvised end of the work, Pappano and all bar the strings, holding a sustained chord, having done their essential work. It’s startling, and suggests that “carnivorous capitalism” has eaten itself, but it’s almost too late for original gestures.

Throughout all this, the LSO and their American counterparts played with unstinting generosity and conviction, but what for? And maybe as a jazz outsider I miss the point, but even in the Ellington, nothing earwormed me. While the engine runs, the car’s impressive; but how do we remember the journey? Standing ovation well deserved for the musicians; but lasting impact? You’ll have to ask others.

by David Nice
Source: The Arts Desk

Ellington’s genius lay in transforming the cadences of popular song into music of substance, and in compressing complex narratives into the timespan of a 78. JLCO captured the sensuous curves and urbane intelligence of that music with discipline and panache. Their short opening set began with “The Mooche”, a work of slinky complexity from the 1920s, and continued by bringing “Harlem Airshaft” and “Concerto for Cootie” vibrantly to life. Chris Crenshaw’s guttural dynamics on trombone stood out and trumpeter Ryan Kisor’s solo added a personal touch. “Big Fat Alice’s Blues” was the closer, a standout feature for Sherman Irby’s smoky alto sax.

Those rich voicings would surface periodically in the second night’s showpiece: trumpeter/director Wynton Marsalis’s Fourth Symphony, The Jungle. This restless, detailed blend of classical modernism and jazz was artfully designed to depict the high-pressure volatility of life in New York, and was delivered magisterially by the combined might of JLCO and a full-strength London Symphony Orchestra.

The Jungle takes established modernist practices from classical music and jazz, stirs the pot, turns up the heat and cooks up something fresh. This performance, conducted by Antonio Pappano, confidently negotiated the twists, turns and sharp-edged juxtapositions of Marsalis’s hour-long symphony. The six-movement composition began with a screech of dissonance that tapered into a sweet-toned chord and ended with a fade of growling muted trumpet and strings.

As the piece progressed, a platoon of riffing double basses surged forth, and sharp-edged brass interjected, along with romantic interludes that hovered close to pastiche. First-nation sorrows and homelessness were alluded to, and the fourth movement, “La Esquina”, progressed with a Latin American pulse. As each piece zigzagged from orchestral might through short bursts of improvised jazz to a single whispered trombone, the blend of the two orchestras was complete. And for all the chop-and-change and sonic shifts, the score cohered impressively. The final part, “Struggle in the Digital Market”, moved from raucous cacophony to sombre ragtime and ended with Marsalis on trumpet, plunger mute at the ready, grumbling over a quiet undertow of shimmering strings.

The first half of the final night of the residency presented Marsalis’s The Democracy! Suite, which was conceived during lockdown and written for the JLCO septet. Modal modernism and traditional jazz practices were combined, the pulse was springy and ensemble discipline exemplary. Among the fresh faces featured, Alexa Tarantino’s flute solo stood out.

The second half found the full orchestra flexing its ensemble muscles and raising the roof with a set of detail-packed original compositions and arrangements by members of the band. Rich Ellingtonian textures surfaced from the reeds, as did the rhythms of New Orleans R&B. The brass slurred and moaned, and modernist virtuosity was juxtaposed with silky textures. “Jo Jo’s Mojo”, written by trumpeter Marcus Printup, was a raucous opener, “Bodegas Groove” sashayed into Latin boogaloo and Vincent Gardner’s transcendent orchestration of Monk’s “Light Blue” delivered layered textures and knockout piano from Isaiah J Thompson.

After a long ovation, the encore introduced three young guests for a small-group romp through “Tenor Madness”, a warhorse Sonny Rollins blues. Marsalis was imperious, the tenor sax joust peaked, but it was guest pianist Joe Webb’s dazzling mix of ragtime stomp and modernist lines that stood out for its original flair.

by Mike Hobart
Source: Financial Times

True, it was only 25 minutes long which seemed a bit stingy. But it was a joy to hear trumpeter Marcus Printup turn the familiar soft melancholy of Concerto for Cootie into sly humour, and witness the perfectly timed interplay in Harlem Airshaft between the saxophone section and another trumpeter Ryan Kisor (they’re all virtuosi in this band).

In any case, the musicians had to save their best energy for what was to follow: Wynton Marsalis’s 65-minute Symphony no 4 “The Jungle”. Marsalis insists that jazz is a uniquely civilising, democratic force, and over the past three decades he has set out to conquer classical forms as well, by infusing them with jazz idioms. With this symphony from 2016 Marsalis joins that long list of musicians who’ve tried to capture the fabulous energy of New York, from Bernstein and Frank Sinatra to Madonna and Steve Reich.

With them you feel the press and urgency of the Big Apple in the present moment. By contrast Marsalis’s symphony felt like a historical parade. We heard brilliant evocations of ragtime, stride piano, swing, Latin music—all those styles that have been wrapped into symphonic jazz since the 1930s. Of soul and hip-hop there was no trace. Marsalis framed all these colourful evocations with an opening and closing movement of hectic film-noir rhythms, suggesting the city has a primal energy that never really changes.

It was a shrewd way to give a sheen of urgency to something essentially conservative, and there’s no doubt Marsalis has become a hugely skilled composer, able to find just the right orchestral colour to evoke a particular idiom. He was royally served by his performers, a combination of the London Symphony Orchestra and the JLCO—including Marsalis himself, who contributed some witty outbursts. Controlling the constant give-and-take between strictly written-out sections for the orchestra and more relaxed improvisations from the band must have been quite a challenge for conductor Antonio Pappano, but he rose to it with superb assurance.

The orchestral players were clearly inspired by the distinguished visitors, playing with such sassy energy that sometimes one couldn’t be sure who was playing what—which was surely what Marsalis was hoping for. Some of the ideas seemed generic rather than inspired, but that may have been because they were whisked away so quickly, to make way for yet another tipsy stride tune or slinky Latin rhythm. Marsalis does tend to over-egg the pudding, but as this over-stuffed, entertaining baggy monster of a piece reminded us over-generosity is a sin that’s easy to forgive.

by Ivan Hewett
Source: The Telegraph

The difference, I think, is that this time Marsalis has a tangible subject to depict and to react with — or against. It’s a subject he knows inside out. The “jungle” is New York, and, by extension, America and its chequered history.

Each movement shows a different facet of that, though the main feeling is one of nonstop freneticism, not always shown in a positive light. The work ends, for instance, with a blistering, brutal portrait of what the programme note calls “carnivorous capitalism”. It gradually implodes into an extraordinary coda in which Marsalis himself (tucked away in the middle of the huge ensemble) uses his trumpet to screech what sounds like cry after cry of pain, madness, protest or rage — urged on by tambourine thwacks that suggest some tyrant financier whipping his minions towards greater profits.

That’s just the most startling of many striking passages. Just as impressive is the way that Marsalis handles two very different beasts: the London Symphony Orchestra and, embedded within them, the 15 brilliant players of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The two ensembles are rarely deployed at the same time, but the interplay between them is deft, with the jazzers supplying edgy solos and the orchestra responding with sumptuous string passages, quirky woodwind moments and lots of ebullient percussion.

There are miscalculations. A solo oboe is required to do jazzy things that oboes don’t sound good doing; and an extended passage of string counterpoint is grey and dutiful. Elsewhere, however, nearly everything works. It was all conducted with unflagging energy and terrifically tight control by Antonio Pappano. There was memorable stuff in the short first half too, with the JLCO’s virtuosos seizing their moments in a succession of Duke Ellington numbers.

by Richard Morrison
Source: The Times

Legendary musician Wynton Marsalis is no stranger to making history. But as he brings his one-of-a-kind blend of classical and jazz to audiences everywhere, he’s reflecting on history, too.

During an appearance on Influential with Katty Kay, Marsalis shares that every time he plays, he understands that he’s bringing his family’s legacy into the spotlight with him. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961, the 63-year-old star was surrounded by performers from the start. His father, Ellis Marsalis Jr, was a jazz pianist and his mother, Dolores Marsalis, a singer.

“I did not want to be famous. I wanted to learn how to play. My standard was my father and all the musicians that I grew up respecting and loving,” Marsalis tells Kay, between showing off his trumpet and playing her a few bars. His humility is tinged with a signature sense of humour. He tells Kay that at first he didn’t want to play the instrument that would make him famous. “I did not want to play trumpet because I did not want to get that ring around my lips. I figured the girls would not kiss you.”

As the first musician – and still the only one – to win a Grammy Award in classical and jazz categories in the same year, Marsalis is open about the ways he jumps between genres to create something true to himself. He credits his unique blend to growing up in the American South during segregation and witnessing change firsthand.

After he began to take music more seriously at the age of 12, he would go on to become the only black musician in the New Orleans Civic Orchestra, and played with the New Orleans Philharmonic. That early success was jarring to someone who saw his father struggle. While he’d played on some of the biggest stages in his hometown, Marsalis was unsure that had the chops to compete with professional musicians in the wider field.

“I had to step back and recalibrate, like what am I going to be able to do? Am I going to be good enough to actually play jazz? That is what I wanted to play. I wanted to be a jazz musician, but it was so few people playing the type of jazz I wanted to play,” Marsalis says.

Once Marsalis joined the prestigious New York City music school Julliard aged 17, he was surrounded by a whole new group of performers – and introduced to new styles of music. As he found his footing in the musical scene, he also found a passion for social justice. He notes that being outspoken seemed to come just as naturally as the trumpet.

“I was shaped by growing up in segregation and having to be integrated into schools where you were not necessarily wanted. You were not wanted,” he says. “I was post-civil rights. So, I was speaking about things that people do not speak about, and I was also very serious about those things.”

Later, he would sign a contract with Colombia Records after shifting his focus from classical music to jazz – thanks in part to touring with Herbie Hancock and the Art Blakey band in Europe. Through it all, he felt jazz in everything he experienced. Touring, not a formal education, would be the thing to show him that his style of music and performing mattered.

“Anything that has a harmonic progression and a melody, you can hear jazz in,” he says.

Marsalis notes that, unlike other genres, jazz makes its performers work together without any singular voice dominating. Instead of stealing the spotlight, jazz musicians must find a balance.

“Sometimes, you do not like what people are doing because you do not understand what they are doing. Sometimes, you do not like what they are doing because you want to control everything that goes on. That’s not what our music is. We are playing together,” he says.

This, too, is the throughline he sees between jazz and social justice. When everyone commits to a common cause, whether its racial equality or musical harmony, it takes leaving egos out of the equation.

“Our music is serious because it liberates people. But it is very difficult to learn how to play and to play well, because it requires you to be in balance with somebody else. That is a hard thing to want to be,” he says.

Reflecting on what he’s doing to help the musicians following in his storied footsteps, Marsalis is straightforward about his approach. He wants to be whom he hoped to have as he rose in the ranks.

by Christopher Luu
Source: BBC

The piece in question is the DSO’s performance of Wynton Marsalis’ “Blues Symphony,” a notoriously challenging 2009 composition that’s both long (seven movements in just over an hour) and intricate in its blend of blues, classical and New Orleans jazz motifs. The DSO performed it in June 2022 and then recorded it during three performances at Orchestra Hall during the first weekend of December 2023.

“I remember that week very well,” says Bignamini, who joined the DSO in 2020. He considers the recording “probably a milestone for the orchestra. It was extremely exciting, but also hard because this piece is very strong, very difficult. But the preparation for these recordings was done at an extremely high level, and we’re lucky to have incredible musicians who … are very flexible and able to play all the different styles of music.”

And Marsalis, a New Orleans-born musical icon who’s now the artistic director for jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, is the first to sing the praises of this new version of his landmark composition.

“Man, they did a fantastic job,” gushes the nine-time Grammy Award winner — the first to win jazz and classical trophies in the same year (1984). “They put a lot of effort, a lot of work into it. (Bignamini) is such a talented musician, and so dedicated. He brought a lot of intelligence and seriousness to it and he’s very easy to work with. They just did it the way they wanted to do it and I liked what they did.”

“Blues Symphony’s” release, on March 14 via the Netherlands-based Pentatone label, is also important because it begins what Bignamini calls “a new path of recording” for the DSO.

The orchestra has a nearly 100-year legacy of recording. It began with 78rpm releases in 1928 with second Music Director Ossip Gabrilowitsch, while a 1982 rendition of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” was the first CD to receive a Grand Prix du Disque award in France. The orchestra has recorded for a number of major labels over the years, including its own Live From Orchestra Hall imprint. Recordings made with Paul Paray and Antal Dorati have also been reissued in deluxe box sets in recent years.

A 2017 recording of “Aaron Copland: Symphony No. 3 and Three Latin Sketches,” with Slatkin conducting, was nominated for a Grammy Award, while its most recent release was in August 2023 of John Williams’ “Trumpet Concerto,” also with Slatkin and featuring DSO principal trumpet Hunter Eberly.

“(Recording) is kind of like your business card now, for an orchestra,” explains DSO President and CEO Erik Ronmark, a saxophonist himself, who served as co-executive producer of “Blues Symphony.” “Even in the streaming world, having a recording out there shows artistic quality. And this adds to our history of recordings with wonderful music directors, from Paul Paray on the Mercury Living Presence label to Antal Dorati on Decca and to Neeme (Jarvi) and Leonard (Slatkin) and now Jader.”

Bignamini says that “Blues Symphony” was hardly a random selection for recording, either.

“There were a few reasons,” he notes. “First of all, it’s a great piece. (Marsalis) composed the ‘Blues Symphony’ very well. And the first time the orchestra played it, it was so good I considered immediately to record it because I understood it was perfect for this orchestra.

“The language of the Marsalis music is very close to the soul of this orchestra. It is also very close to the heritage and the culture of this city.” The “Blues Symphony” cover is even a reference to the Paradise Theater, a jazz venue that operated in the Orchestra Hall site from 1941-51.

Marsalis says his intent with “Blues Symphony” was “to give a symphonic identity to the form and feeling of the blues, using that language in the context of an orchestra.” He worked on it “over many years, just as a hobby to learn how to orchestrate without the (standard) rhythm section. So that was a big challenge to me.” He adds with a laugh that, “When I first played it, it sounded terrible,” before a colleague at Princeton University counseled Marsalis to simplify his approach.

“When musicians play it, they always tell you, ‘This should be better, these parts’ or this and that,” Marsalis says. “I would write down those thoughts from musicians, ‘What can I do to make parts better?’ Over time, I corrected it. Nothing in the form or the melodies ever changed, but the overall orchestrations and how to build it out, that changed. It’s a living piece.”

DSO concertmaster Robin Bollinger, who serves as liaison between Bignamini and the orchestra’s string players, remembers that “my colleagues had warned me months in advance that ‘Blues Symphony’ is coming. It’s really hard. So I started studying and going through the score and starting to woodshed … because this piece is so virtuosic for the orchestra, and it’s so dense. It’s just pages and pages of black dots. It’s really busy. So I was really just mastering the material from June (of 2023) to the recording week.”

Recording producer Blanton Alspaugh and engineer Mark Donahue of Boston-based Soundmirror — both Grammy winners, the latter this year — had worked with the DSO before, during Slatkin’s tenure. “You’re kind of swinging for the fences, right off here,” Alspaugh says of the “Blues Symphony” choice. “You’re starting off with a brilliant piece, fiendishly difficult to play, very detailed.” And also to record, according to Donahue.

“It’s very, very difficult because (Marsalis) used a full orchestra,” says the engineer, who deployed 55 microphones on stage and around the venue to capture the nuances of the performance. “There’s a massive batter of percussion, and each of them is used for a very specific thing and it’s very detailed about what (Marsalis) wants to happen. You have five percussionists running around, trying to cover all these parts, so at any point the microphone might not be in the exact right spot to get this one particular instrument. So you’re fighting a lot of things.”

The recording team reviewed each night’s performance and also sent them along to Marsalis, who would return notes for the next concert. “I had a whole list of things I was saying during the recording — now it’s been so long I don’t remember them with specificity,” Marsalis says. “It was mostly just general attention to detailing and hearing the development of the movements.

“In the seventh movement (‘Dialogue in Democracy’), I liked the way (Bignamini) dealt with the build-up, how he built one layer on top of another layer, the balance of the instruments. He had a really good understanding of how stuff should be balanced. So we worked to make things clearer, ’cause there’s a lot of stuff going on.”

Bignamini recalls “it was very interesting for me and very meaningful to work side by side with Wynton, talking to him every day (about) his concerns about this specific point, this bar, ‘Be careful about this,’ or ‘I would like to have a different sound, please go there.’ He spent a lot of time, and I appreciate it because he’s so serious in his job, as am I.”

A “patch session” also was held after the concerts to nail down loose ends, but Alspaugh, the producer, adds that for all of the technique and expertise applied, it was most important for the recording to showcase the orchestra’s performance.

“The overwhelming majority of what you hear on the recording, it’s not made with microphones and faders; it was made with the players and the conductors,” he explains. “We would talk with them and say, ‘We need more of this’ or ‘We need less of that’ and ‘Can we do this with that figure,’ so it’s that collaboration with the artist that got most of what you hear in terms of balance and perspective and things like that.”

The DSO intends “Blues Symphony” to launch another prolific period of recording for the orchestra; a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 has already been captured, though not yet scheduled for release, and Ronmark says other sessions are slated for this year. Bignamini, meanwhile, has an ongoing list of recordings he’d like to see the DSO make during his tenure.

“I think that is very important for an orchestra to keep at a high level,” he explains. “To have these kind of challenges, because during recording you have to pay attention to everything, it’s also very useful for the orchestra to have this kind of approach also during our regular concerts. This is very important to keep at the level and to show to all the world that this orchestra is one of the best.”

For more information and “Blues Symphony” orders, visit dso.org or pentatonemusic.com

by Gary Fraff
Source: The Oakland Express

The world-renowned musician — a nine-time Grammy Award winner and Pulitzer Prize holder — was given his first trumpet at age 6. He began classical training at just 12 years old. At 22, he became the first musician to win a Grammy in both jazz and classical music in the same year.

But Marsalis doesn’t get emotional when reflecting on his many achievements.

“I don’t have a sentimental relationship with myself,” Marsalis told “CBS Mornings” co-anchor Gayle King during an interview at New York City’s Lincoln Center.

He doesn’t feel proud. He feels grateful.

“I’m grateful for … the opportunities that have been provided for me, and the education I received, and all the great musicians I’ve played with, and play with. And the fantastic people I get to work with. But nothin’ I did was about me … This was about jazz,” Marsalis said.

“The house that Wynton built”

Marsalis is the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center which recently marked the 20th anniversary of the opening of Frederick P. Rose Hall — the first complex devoted solely to jazz. Affectionately known as “the house that Wynton built,” the 100,000-square-foot facility features carefully curated spaces for performance, education and broadcast.

Inside the concert hall, you can often hear Marsalis and the orchestra rehearsing — and sharing notes with each other in the process.

“When we rehearse, we do our thing our way. We talk, we argue about music, we go back and forth with each other, ‘cause we have that love and that respect,” Marsalis explained.

Marsalis cherishes collaboration with fellow musicians as they search for the right sound.

“When you play your arrangement, if it’s not good, the band goes silent. I’ll say, ‘Y’all don’t like that one?’” Marsalis joked.

While Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra are thrilled by the organization’s milestone achievements, the legendary jazz musician acknowledges the path to creating their own space wasn’t always so smooth.

“It was hard,” he admitted. “And we wanted to kill each other at the end of it. It’s like learnin’ how to play. It’s hard. But that’s what makes it worth doin’.”

There were a lot of moving parts as the small organization worked to raise money for the jazz concert hall. As they started their journey to build Frederick P. Rose Hall, the group ran out of funds. Marsalis wasn’t sure if the building would ever get finished.

“At a certain point, [a] gentleman I was talkin’ to, I don’t remember his name, he said, ‘Look, man.’ He said, ‘I live down the street from John Coltrane’s house in Long Island. We’re gonna finish this,’” recalled Marsalis, adding that he’ll “tear up thinkin’ about it.”

Marsalis’ jazz roots run deep

Rose Hall, which features three concert and performance spaces, is located in Midtown Manhattan, less than a mile from the famed Juilliard School that Marsalis attended as a teen.

Born in New Orleans to renowned jazz pianist and educator Ellis Marsalis Jr., music pulsates through Marsalis’ veins. Aside from his father, Marsalis had another role model: John Coltrane.

“I started listening to ‘Trane all that summer when I was 12. I would put that record on. And I started to be able to hear what he was saying. And then when I heard that, I was like, ‘Man, it’s like a whole world opened up. Like, you have the wisest, most insightful people in the world are talkin’ to you,’” Marsalis recalled when he began his classical training.

Marsalis, now 63, has recorded over 100 studio albums. Over the past five decades, he developed a reputation that preceded his art.

Some have called him “stuffy” and “combative” and claimed his work was too narrow — but Marsalis doesn’t take any of these critiques personally.

“I grew up in segregation, OK? And when Martin Luther King was killed, we were integrated into an environment. And many times, what I felt and had to say was not what was being said, OK?” Marsalis explained.

Marsalis said he felt like he was just trying to maintain the status quo. But now, Marsalis appears to have found his voice.

“Luckily, we live in a democracy. And you can express yourself. The generation before me, they couldn’t be in these forums and talk. And I have the freedom to express myself, and they have the freedom to do that,” he said.

In September, “CBS Mornings” took in the majesty of Rose theater, joining Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra for opening night of their 20th season. The house was indeed swinging — filled with a captivated audience, dancing in their seats and tapping their fingers along to the beats. That’s the magic of jazz.

By Jennifer Earl, Gisela Pérez, Alicia Alford
Source: CBS News

“If I’m playing in a rhythm and you’re playing a totally different rhythm, we’re not going to agree,” said the acclaimed composer and musician last week at a campus event. “Not only are we not going to agree, we’re not going to sound good. And if we don’t have the same understanding of what we’re trying to do on the bandstand, we’re going to have hard time.”

And, he said, when musicians agree less and less on what constitutes their common musical history, they lose the language that connects them.

A longstanding advocate for arts education and for wider recognition of jazz and its contributions to American culture and history, Marsalis spoke on Feb. 10 with Anthony Foxx, co-director of the Center for Public Leadership and the Emma Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, to launch the Culture and Civil Society Initiative.

A similar foundational agreement to the one that makes jazz possible undergirds this country, said Marsalis, who is managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. “If we cannot agree that the Constitution is a document that is designed to create agency for others and that it is a leveling document, we can’t have a democracy.”

There are some in the nation focused on “dismantling democracy with chaos and creating a working class that is disenfranchised — [they hope] all over the world,” so that everything “can be turned over to corporations who have done nothing to show you that they are trustworthy,” he said.

Marsalis, 63, broke out in the early 1980s as a trumpet-playing prodigy, winning Grammys in both jazz and classical music in 1983 and 1984, a historic first. In 2009, Harvard presented him with an honorary Doctor of Music. From 2011-2012, he gave a series of performances and lectures on music at Sanders Theatre.

Marsalis was on campus last week to help launch the new research and teaching program at CPL. The initiative seeks to harness the power of arts and culture to fortify democratic institutions and encourage civil dialogue. Foxx said the idea for the program evolved from his conversations with Marsalis.

Marsalis said he was not alarmed that today’s partisanship might irreparably divide Americans because he sees this as a clash over power and economics that’s been going on in the U.S. for centuries.

“I’m always optimistic because I understand what our history has been. We’re still fighting the Civil War; and now, the South is ahead,” he said.

As a young horn player, he recalled receiving valuable lessons from seasoned pros like his father, the late pianist Ellis Marsalis. He tries to offer similar guidance to students at his alma mater, Juilliard, where he is now director of jazz studies.

“I always say, take yourself seriously; take what you think seriously; take what you feel seriously; take your power seriously; take your word seriously. These are always serious times, and not because of any new president,” but because fighting for human rights and for everyone to have an equitable life is an “uphill battle” that never ends.

Marsalis could have become a classical music star (he has recorded 20 classical albums) but said he had little doubt about his career path, having grown up in a family of jazz musicians. For those students who aren’t sure which creative path to follow, however, he encourages them to write a mission statement.

“It’s three sentences: What I want to do, through what means am I going to do it, and why do I want to do it? And I tell them, work on this like it’s a poem to yourself and take words out of it. And just study it,” he said. As musicians, “we’re always studying other people — Charlie Parker or [Thelonius] Monk. It’s important to study other people, but study yourself and get to what you really want to do.”

Marsalis batted away the suggestion that jazz carries some extra historical or cultural burden because it, like the blues, is born from blood and pain.

“Everything is born in some kind of pain. It is a fact of life. It doesn’t make you able to do anything. A lot of people are in pain. It doesn’t mean they sing like Billie Holiday.” The central question in jazz, Marsalis said, is “can you play? If you can play, play it.”

by Christina Pazzanese
Source: Harvard Gazette

Mr. Marsalis and the Orchestra introduced a stunning new version of “Aunt Hagar’s Blues” arranged by Wycliffe Gordon and featuring the outstanding young vocalist Shenel Johns. Like many Handy works, it’s in several sections. Mr. Gordon’s arrangement started with a drum intro by Obed Calvaire before the ensemble played a simmering version of the part that’s sometimes called the verse, leading into the main chorus with trombones and handclaps. The piece then slowed down and shifted to 2/4 from 4/4 for Ms. Johns’s entrance.

The narrative of the lyrics concerns an older church lady who stands up to a disapproving deacon and defends her right, and that of the congregation, to party to the beat of the blues. “It’s like a choir from on high broke loose / If the Devil brought it, the good Lord sent it right down to me.” This is not a particularly erotic blues, compared to other works in the general genre, but Ms. Johns made it seem very sexy just the same.

After exploring swing, early modern jazz, and the hard bop/cool dichotomy in earlier concerts this season, now Mr. Marsalis and his Lincoln Centurians are traveling back to the roots of the music with “Jazz Americana,” a show that features new arrangements of pivotal pre-jazz pieces — the blues, folk songs, ragtime, and even some country music — along with two newly commissioned works.

Whereas other contemporary maestros revisiting this early music — such as Steven Bernstein, whose Millennial Territory Orchestra is playing Carnegie Zankel on March 14 — try to incorporate some of the funk and grit of early jazz and protojazz, Mr. Marsalis and his staff of arrangers keep everything very smooth and highly swinging, driven by rock-solid propulsion from Mr. Calvaire along with bassist Carlos Henriquez and guest pianist Sean Mason. In general, the results sound like a set of early music as played by Count Basie’s New Testament Orchestra of the 1950s, gloriously swinging in its own way. Also, it works: This is an interpretation, not a recreation.

The playing of two guest violinists, Mark O’Connor and his wife and musical partner Margie O’Connor, fit comfortably into this vein: Mr. O’Connor seems able to switch seamlessly between the classical repertoire, jazz, country, bluegrass, and movie music and play it all incredibly, without breaking a sweat. He played a C&W classic, “The Tennessee Waltz,” a jazz standard, “Honeysuckle Rose,” and the traditional fiddle breakdown “Sally Gooden,” attributed to Eck Robinson.

The two new pieces composed specifically for this concert were both wholly successful. Terry Waldo, the 80-year old ragtimer and stride pianist, gave us the self-titled “Waldo’s World,” in three short movements, starting with “Ragtime” composed in the spirit of Scott Joplin and featuring a 21-year-old banjo virtuoso, Gavin Rice.

“Bix Lix,” dedicated to the legendary cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, was played by the five saxophones of the reed section — but rather than evoke Beiderbecke’s saxophonic partner Frank Trumbauer, this impressionistic piece was highly inspired by Bix’s piano compositions. The final movement, “Striding into Swing” summoned up James P. Johnson and showed how the great swing bands evolved out of the Harlem stride players. Mr. Waldo’s outstanding work, orchestrated for the big band by Sam Chess, succinctly covered many generations of jazz in a brief eight minutes or so.

“New Orleans Humbug,” by a New Orleans clarinetist and educator, Michael White, was introduced by the composer as referring to a heated argument or a kerfuffle of some kind transpiring in one of the Crescent City’s omnipresent traditional social clubs. It began with what seemed like a paraphrase of “Wild Man Blues,” and then featured Mr. Mason playing very spare blues piano as well as Mr. Rice, and eventually evolved into a piece that recreated what NOLA pioneers such as Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver were playing as they eased into larger format dance orchestras in the late jazz age.

It included prominent tuba by Chris Crenshaw, more customarily a trombonist. Mr. White took only a single chorus of a clarinet solo, a blues so funky it sounded like the instrument would disintegrate into dust before he finished playing.

Dr. White also described “Humbug” as having been inspired by the New Orleans funeral tradition, like the last piece of the evening, trumpeter Marcus Printup’s excellent arrangement of the traditional hymn “Amazing Grace.” It began slow and somber, like the dirge-like walk to the graveyard, with Abdias Armenteros playing tenor saxophone with a big, highly vocalized tone reminiscent of the great Gospel saxophonist Dr. Vernard Johnson. Soon enough, it broke into the expected uptempo free-for-all, representing the jubilant march back into town from the cemetery, and this time Chris Lewis took a powerful tenor solo.

With both tenors wailing and everyone in the hall leaping to their feet, it proved to be one of the most jubilant moments I’ve ever experienced in Rose Hall. This served to prove that, 250 years after the abolitionist John Newton originally gave us “Amazing Grace” and 100 years after W.C. Handy, we are all still Aunt Hagar’s children.

by Will Friedwald
Source: The New York Sun

LOUIS pays homage to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, beautiful women and the birth of jazz. The grand Storyville bordellos, alleys and cemeteries of 1907 New Orleans provide a backdrop of lust, blood and magic for 6-year-old Louis (Anthony Coleman) as he navigates the colorful intricacies of life in the city. Young Louis’s dream of playing the trumpet is interrupted by a chance meeting with a beautiful and vulnerable girl named Grace (Shanti Lowry) and her baby, Jasmine. Jackie Earle Haley (“Watchmen”, “Little Children”) in a performance reminiscent of the great comic stars of the silent screen, plays evil Judge Perry who is determined not to let Jasmine’s true heritage derail his candidacy for governor. Michael Rooker (“The Walking Dead”, “Guardians of the Galaxy”) is Perry’s all-too-willing henchman, Pat McMurphy.

Pritzker was writing a screenplay about the legendary first man of jazz, Buddy Bolden when he saw Charlie Chaplin’s silent film “City Lights” with the Chicago Symphony performing the score live. “It floored me. I’d never seen a film on a big screen with live music, and it occurred to me to make a silent film about jazz,” said Pritzker.

“The story of a little boy in early 1900’s New Orleans who wants to play the trumpet seemed well suited to a silent film. The birth of jazz, where the pictures and the music would tell the story, seemed an obvious path the minute it crossed my mind and since I’d never made a film before, I wasn’t burdened by any notion of what I’d be up against trying to pull it off. I resisted the temptation to adhere to the technical parameters of movies made prior to 1930, such as 4:3 aspect ratio and fixed camera positions. We did “under-crank” the camera to 18 frames per second in order to give the film a somewhat sped up and slightly jittery feel reminiscent of films from the silent era, but other than that, we used modern equipment and techniques.”

Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond commented, “This was a very interesting project for me because I always wanted to do a silent film, and these days it’s highly unusual for one to be made. I also love working in black-and-white. Today’s black-and-white film isn’t as good as color when it comes to grain and texture,” he says. “To do a real black-and-white film, it’s better to start in color and then take the color out.

With the score being such an integral part of silent film in providing many of the emotional cues, it was important for the actors to work with the music both in rehearsal and on the set. Wynton Marsalis led recording sessions in New York with an array of stellar players including Wycliffe Gordon, Victor Goines, Marcus Printup, Ted Nash, Carlos Henriquez and Ali Jackson.

“Wynton was such a perfect and obvious choice when thinking about the music for the film that I didn’t really think he’d do it,” says Pritzker.
Producer Jon Cornick was more optimistic. Pritzker continues, “We invited Wynton to dinner in New York, and on the way there Jon and I discussed how we’d approach him. It was important to me that Wynton knew I wasn’t making a biopic – Armstrong’s adult life has been microscopically dissected and publicized, and I wasn’t interested in taking that approach. This was going to be a silent film about jazz – kind of whimsical, although there are certainly real elements of Armstrong’s early life in the storyline. Fortunately for me, the mythical approach and the silent film genre were both attractive to Wynton and he came on board.”

“The idea of writing music to a silent film telling the tale of a young Louis Armstrong really appealed to me,” says Marsalis. “Of course, calling it a silent film is a misnomer — there is plenty of music, and jazz is like a conversation between the players so there’s no shortage of dialogue. The score moves between my music and the music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. The contrast between Gottschalk’s music and jazz can be a revelation to those unfamiliar with either, or both.”

LOUIS is a silent film by Dan Pritzker starring Anthony Coleman, Shanti Lowry, Academy Award® nominee Jackie Earl Haley and Michael Rooker.

LOUIS will be presented with music performed live by Wynton Marsalis and classical pianist Cecile Licad with an all-star jazz ensemble in a series of dates on the West Coast in May, 2025.

For further information contact Michele Tayler for Dipperflicks ~ mtayler@tinkertayler.com m: 203-895-8214. © Louis/Dipperflicks LLC Louisthemovie.com

The seven-movement symphony was over a decade in the making and is now regarded as one of Marsalis’s most innovative and expansive compositions, representing the scope of America’s musical heritage. Movement V. “Big City Breaks” is now available as an Instant Gratification Track and Movement I. “Born in Hope” will be released on February 21, 2025.

Marsalis shares, "The Blues Symphony is a seven-movement work that gives a symphonic identity to the form and feeling of the blues. It utilizes regional and stylistic particulars of the idiom’s language and form to convey the basic point of view of the blues as music: ‘Life hands you hard times.’ When you cry, holler, and shout to release those hard times; when you tease, cajole, and play to diminish them; and when you dance and find a common community through groove, better times will be found. The more profound the pain, the deeper the groove.”

He continues, “I believe there is an organic and real connection between all Western orchestra traditions regardless of instrumentation, and that the symphonic orchestra can and will traditions regardless of instrumentation, and that the symphonic orchestra can and will swing, play the blues, feature melodic improvisation, and execute the more virtuosic aspects of jazz and American vernacular music with absolute authenticity.”

Jader Bignamini, marking his debut commercial recording and first as Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, America’s fourth-oldest, adds, “This dynamic and challenging work captures the breadth of American music and can be appreciated from both the orchestral and jazz worlds. I believe it brings together the two souls of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and speaks to the musical legacy of the city of Detroit and our home, Orchestra Hall.”

In conjunction with the release of Blues Symphony, the DSO is also pressing a limited vinyl edition of the work through Detroit’s Third Man Records. This non-commercial release will feature a cover by Detroit artist Judy Bowman commissioned by the DSO and be available exclusively to supporters of the orchestra’s new Gold Record Collective, which will raise funds to support future recording projects and record releases by the DSO. For more information, visit dso.org/grc.

Blues Symphony is intended to further the legacy of Gershwin, James P. Johnson, Bernstein, John Lewis, and others who were determined to infuse the innovations of jazz into the vocabulary of the symphonic orchestra. The work was commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2009 and received its New York premiere by the American Composers Orchestra in 2015.

The first movement “Born in Hope” is an evocation of the American Revolution and the birth of the possibility of the blues. Many different voices slowly differentiate themselves into an identifiable melodic theme based on “Yankee Doodle Dandy” to exemplify E Pluribus Unum – from many, one – ending in a ragtime march.

The symphony continues with movement two, “Swimming in Sorrow,” influenced by the Afro-American parlor music of the 19th century, gospel and church music, New Orleans funeral marches, and swing violin stylings of masters like Claude Williams and Stéphane Grappelli, concluding with a repeated blues cry on the English horn above a sustained trumpet note, evoking Dvorak’s 9th Symphony “From the New World.”

The third movement “Reconstruction Rag” begins in the world of circus waltzes and parlor music – New Orleans circa 1890 – infused with the sound of a train, symbolizing freedom. Once the train pulls into the station, a long coda based on Jelly Roll Morton’s King Porter Stomp ultimately stomps to a halt with a New Orleans-cymbal-choke tag.

The fourth movement “Southwestern Shakedown” begins with the free call and response of the Devotional opening of the Afro-American Baptist Church, later turning into a Saturday night straight-up dance shuffle, the most flexible and enduring American rhythm. Marsalis describes it as “our version of an African 6/8 clave that all countries in the Americas have interpreted in their own way.”

Movement five, “Big City Breaks,” invokes the sonic landscape of Manhattan using breaks and stop-time effects inspired by percussion techniques from the bebop drums of Max Roach, to the claves of Latin jazz, to the brass and percussion of Third Stream jazz. Traffic sounds and the everyday fadeout of 5 o’clock eases into a softer, angelic side of the city… but the chanting brass and repeating bass tell us: it’s still the asphalt jungle.

“Danzon y Mambo, Choro y Samba,” movement six, begins with the feel of New Orleans/Cuban concert music and a male-female dialogue between violin and cello. Marsalis explains, “An interlude of woodwinds leads into a Charanga-inflected flute solo in honor of Alberto Soccaras from Cuba who played the first jazz flute solo in 1927. Mr. Soccaras was an ear training teacher of mine in 1979-80, and I had no idea who he was.”

The symphony closes with “Dialogue In Democracy,” the only piece of music Marsalis has ever written on the trumpet. He recorded himself playing a typical improvisation on a very fast tempo blues form and spread it out across the bottom and top of the orchestra. The composer shares, “The lines are obtuse, chromatic and polyrhythmic, yet still the blues. It is a dialogue between the low and high voices that ends up in a shouting then screaming match. After reaching the climactic point, which serves also as the resolution of the argument, we reprise a patchwork quilt of moments from the preceding dialogue alternating between high and low voices. It is business as usual. We have to communicate with one another. The orchestra ascends to a final very brief break, and with one final grand statement of the very first theme, the Blues Symphony is done.”

The DSO’s distinguished history of recordings — many led by its renowned music directors — spans nearly a century, beginning with the orchestra’s first 78 rpm singles with Ossip Gabrilowitsch released on the Victrola label in 1928. A steady recording output has continued since then, with highlights including more than 20 releases with Paul Paray for Mercury’s Living Presence series, and 27 under the baton of Neeme Järvi, mostly on the Chandos label. In the 1970s, the DSO took part in the historic Black Composers Series for Columbia Records led by its then-Associate Conductor Paul Freeman and later made several acclaimed recordings with Antal Doráti for the Decca label. More recently, under the direction of Leonard Slatkin, the DSO recorded music by Rachmaninoff, Copland, and John Williams for the Naxos label, earning its first GRAMMY® nomination in 2017 for Copland’s Third Symphony / Three Latin American Sketches.

Marsalis: Blues Symphony Tracklist

Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961) – Blues Symphony (2009)

1. I. Born in Hope [7:41]
2. II. Swimming in Sorrow [13:09]
3. III. Reconstruction Rag [10:04]
4. IV. Southwestern Shakedown [8:08]
5. V. Big City Breaks [4:29]
6. VI. Danzon y Mambo, Choro y Samba [11:23]
7. VII. Dialogue In Democracy [6:32]

TT: 01:01:26

Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Jader Bignamini, Conductor
Executive Producer: Erik Rönmark (Detroit Symphony Orchestra) & Sean Hickey (PENTATONE)
Audio Recording & Post-Production: Soundmirror, Boston
Recording Producer: Blanton Alspaugh (Soundmirror)
Recording Engineer, Mixing & Mastering: Mark Donahue (Soundmirror)
Original Cover Photography: Paradise Marquee, photographer unknown, DSO Archives
Cover Design: Marjolein Coenrady
Photo of Jader Bignamini: Justin Milhouse
Product Management & Design: Karolina Szymanik

PTC 5187232

Recorded between December 1-3, 2023, in Orchestra Hall in Detroit, MI.

About the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
The acclaimed Detroit Symphony Orchestra is known for trailblazing performances, collaborations with the world’s foremost musical artists, and a deep connection to its city. Led by Music Director Jader Bignamini since 2020, the DSO makes its home at the historic Orchestra Hall within the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center, offering a robust performance schedule that features classical, pops, jazz, and family concerts, plus community performances. Enrico Lopez-Yañez was named Principal Pops Conductor in 2023, trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard serves as the orchestra’s Fred A. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair, and Tabita Berglund began her tenure as Principal Guest Conductor in the 2024 – 25 season. A dedication to broadcast innovation and technology began in 1922, when the DSO became the first orchestra in the world to present a live radio broadcast of a concert and continues today with the groundbreaking Live from Orchestra Hall series of free webcasts.

Since its first school concerts a century ago, and particularly since the founding of the Civic Youth Ensembles in 1970, the DSO has been a national leader in bringing the benefits of music education to students, teachers, and families in Detroit and surrounding communities. The DSO remains committed to expanding its participation in the growth and well-being of Detroit through programs like its Detroit Neighborhood Initiative — cultural events co-created with community partners and residents — and Detroit Harmony, a promise to provide an instrument and instruction to any student in the city who wants to learn. With unwavering support from the people of Detroit, the DSO actively pursues a mission to impact lives through the power of unforgettable musical experiences.

About Jader Bignamini
Jader Bignamini was introduced as the 18th music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in January 2020, commencing with the 2020 – 21 season. His infectious passion and artistic excellence set the tone for the seasons ahead, creating extraordinary music and establishing a close relationship with the orchestra. During his tenure in Detroit, Bignamini has collaborated with such artists as Branford Marsalis, Hilary Hahn, Daniil Trifonov, Yuja Wang, Yo-Yo Ma, and Alisa Weilerstein, as well as composers Michael Abels and Carlos Simon, and conducted major symphonic works by Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Strauss, plus Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Florence Price, and Margaret Bonds. A jazz aficionado, he has immersed himself in Detroit’s rich jazz culture and the influences of American music. In 2023, the DSO extended Bignamini’s contract for a second five-year term, through 2031.

A native of Crema, Italy, Bignamini studied at the Piacenza Music Conservatory and began his career as a clarinetist with Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, later serving as the group’s resident conductor. Captivated by the works of legends like Mahler and Tchaikovsky, Bignamini explored their complexity and power, puzzling out each instrument’s role in creating a larger-than-life sound. In the years since, Bignamini has conducted some of the world’s most acclaimed orchestras and opera companies in venues across the globe including working with Riccardo Chailly on concerts of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in 2013 and his concert debut at La Scala in 2015 for the opening season of La Sinfonica di Milano.

Recent highlights include debuts with Opera de Paris, Deutsche Opera Berlin, Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra, and the Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Minnesota symphonies; The Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival; and at the Grand Teton Festival. He has also appeared with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic; with the Metropolitan Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Vienna State Opera, Dutch National Opera, and Bayerische Staatsoper; in Montpellier for the Festival de Radio France; and had return engagements with Oper Frankfurt and Santa Fe Opera. In Italy, Bignamini has conducted numerous operas at Arena of Verona, Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera, Teatro Massimo in Palermo, the Verdi Festival in Parma, Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, and La Fenice in Venice.

Bignamini also has a great career in Asia, including Japan where he has conducted the Osaka Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, the Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and opera productions of Andrea Chenier at NHK and La Traviata by Sofia Coppola with costumes by Valentino in Tokyo and on tour with Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera that is available on Blu-ray.

One of Bignamini’s greatest passions is working with the next generation of musicians, and during the summer he is a regular guest of the Interlochen Center for the Arts with the DSO and of the Asian Youth Orchestra, leading tours featuring the most talented young musicians from Asia.

About Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis is a world-renowned trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and a leading advocate of American culture. Marsalis was born to a musical family in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961. He began performing jazz and classical trumpet music from an early age. In 1980, upon moving to New York to attend The Juilliard School, Marsalis launched his career performing as a member of the legendary Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

In the four and a half 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, Marsalis has released 129 recordings and composed hundreds of original pieces for symphony orchestra, jazz big band, and a variety of chamber music configurations. He has performed in 858 cities and 65 countries across the globe to date.

Marsalis is the recipient of 41 honorary degrees, countless awards, and was appointed a UN Messenger of Peace (2001). He has been bestowed some of the world’s highest government honors for the arts: The National Medal of Arts (USA, 2005), a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur (France, 2009), The National Humanities Medal (USA, 2016), and the Praemium Imperiale for Music (Japan, 2023).

Marsalis presently serves as Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School, and President of The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation. He continues to inspire new generations of musicians and audiences through his performances, recordings, compositions, and educational initiatives. Learn more at www.wyntonmarsalis.org.

Marsalis, from a multi-generational family of renowned musicians, is a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, a 9 Grammy Award winner, a Pulitzer Prize recipient, and a superb trumpet artist. He’s been at the helm of the JLCO, founded in 1988, since 1991. This evening, the world-renowned 15-member “big band” eloquently performed compositions crafted during the golden age of bebop, with historically significant arrangements.

The 8 pieces on the program and ultimate encore were mostly generated in the last half of the 1940’s, mainly composed by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, alto saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, and pianist Thelonious Monk, and the selections were augmented by way of reminiscence and anecdote, a veritable personality showcase. As Wynton noted, “Bebop is about integration”.

The genius musicians whose songs formed the basis of the concert, according to former JLCO trombone Vincent Gardner, “Represent a time when young musicians took a stand after World War II and made a statement through a new music. Everything must change- the world cannot remain the same. To make their statement, artists…created music that contained youthful fun, virtuosity and intellect, and above all, the position that it didn’t matter what color or nationality you were; if you could learn how to play it, then you could participate.” Jane Levere for Forbes, November 9, 2024.

It’s almost impossible to overstate the effect Gillespie, Parker and Monk have had on the development of jazz as a musical genre. Their playing influenced the development of every player who came after them, taking the harmonies of earlier diatonic jazz, and superimposing chromatics which opened up the territory, breaking up the steady pulse with complex improvisational rhythms. In fact, the very word “bebop” is a descriptive rendering of a new type of phrasing.

The setlist included Grand Central Getaway by Jimmy Dorsey and Dizzy Gillespie, 1943; Lover, Come Back to Me, and Guarachi Guaro, by Dizzy Gillespie 1949, both pieces infused with Afro-Cuban swing; Donna Lee, a jazz standard attributed to Charlie Parker, 1947, a very complicated, ultra-fast piece, and Ugly Beauty. This last work, a 1967 sweet slow waltz by Thelonius Monk, can be seen in this version as a reference to Monk’s asymmetry, “his predilection for dissonant intervals, altered chords and rhythmic displacement.”

Kudos to the Orchestra: Wynton Marsalis, trumpet; Ryan Kisor, trumpet; Kenny Rampton, trumpet; Marcus Printup, trumpet; Chris Crenshaw, trombone; Elliot Mason, trombone; Michael Dease, trombone; Sherman Irby, alto and soprano saxophones, flute, clarinet; Alexa Tarantino, alto and soprano saxophones, flute, clarinet; Chris Lewis, tenor and soprano saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet; Abdias Armenteros, tenor and soprano saxophones, clarinet; Paul Nedzela, baritone and soprano saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet; Dan Nimmer, piano; Carlos Henriquez, bass; and Obed Calvaire, drums.

by Debra Davy
Source: Splash Magazines

Wynton Marsalis has always moved confidently between the musical worlds of jazz and classical music – as a trumpeter and as a composer. This is also evident in his Concerto for Orchestra, which he composed on commission from the WDR Symphony Orchestra. Cristian Măcelaru, who has been connected with the composer both musically and as a friend for many years, describes the work:

“The idea for the Concerto for Orchestra arose from the many years of collaboration and the many conversations I have had with Wynton Marsalis. The language he uses in all his compositions is the idiom of jazz, but the way he builds the structure has classical origins. Forms that go back to the fugue or passacaglia are present in all his compositions. But he reinvents them to fit his own musical language. He combines these two idioms in a way that both shapes jazz structure and challenges the classical tradition. I like the way he references many of the important artists who helped create the language of jazz, but you will also find parallels to traditional composers. When I visited him once, I was surprised to find a score of Haydn’s string quartets in his library – and he confessed to me that he was studying it to better understand how to compose for strings. Wynton Marsalis’ genius is not limited by jazz harmonies and rhythms, nor by conventional musical gestures. His approach always opens up a new universe. It is a great honor for me to bring this composition to life, and I hope that everyone will feel privileged to be part of this unique event.”

Concerto for Orchestra
World premiere: January 31, 2025 and February 1, 2025 at 9pm
Venue: Kölner Philharmonie – Cologne, Germany
Orchestra: WDR Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Cristian Măcelaru
Live webcast on February 1, 2025 at 9pm

Chautauqua at 150: Wynton Marsalis’ All Rise is a one-hour PBS documentary that celebrates the sesquicentennial of this iconic institution while exploring the ever-evolving definition of democracy through powerful stories and performances that have unfolded there. Featuring appearances by Wynton Marsalis, Kathryn Hahn, Lewis Black, Denyce Graves Montgomery, Misty Copeland, Otis Moss III, Kwame Alexander, and many more, Chautauqua at 150: Wynton Marsalis’ All Rise artistically looks at the evolution of ongoing cultural issues, and the impact that Chautauqua Institution has had in providing a critical platform for some of the most thought-provoking, challenging, and often uplifting conversations in America and beyond.

As part of this inspiring story of Chautauqua Institution, the documentary showcases legendary musician Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, along with Chautauqua’s Music School Festival Orchestra (MSFO) and the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus, performing Marsalis’s groundbreaking musical extravaganza “All Rise” in the famous Chautauqua Amphitheater during the 2024 Summer Assembly. The musicians and performance are the embodiment of both the symphony “All Rise,” as well as Chautauqua Institution itself – a shared exploration of the American experience that illustrates how America is at its best when as a people, we celebrate our differences and rise up together to protect the foundation of this great nation – democracy.

When and Where to Watch
The documentary premieres on PBS stations on February 11 at 10 p.m. EST. After that, Chautauqua at 150: Wynton Marsalis’ All Rise will be available to stream on PBS.org and the PBS app for 28 days beginning February 11. After this 28-day free screening window, it will move into Passport. In addition, Wynton Marsalis’ All Rise: Live at Chautauqua (the two-hour performance) will be available for members to stream exclusively in Passport beginning February 11.

Home Gatherings
Chautauqua Institution will support patrons who wish to host screening events in their homes on or after February 11, 2025. If you want to host a gathering in your home, contact Emily Morris, Chief Brand Officer, at emorris@chq.org

New York, NY (Jan. 23, 2025) — On February 7 and 8, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, joined by special guests—vocalist Shenel Johns, violinist and fiddler Maggie O’Connor, fiddler Mark O’Connor, banjo player and guitarist Gavin Rice, and pianist Terry Waldo — will explore the roots of jazz in Jazz Americana at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater. Jazz at Lincoln Center is located on Broadway at 60th Street in New York, NY.

Jazz Americana convenes Shenel Johns, Maggie O’Connor, Mark O’Connor, Gavin Rice, and Terry Waldo on one bill for the first time for a performance featuring new arrangements, by members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, of traditional roots music.

Dr. Michael White and Terry Waldo were each commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center to compose new works. On these special evenings, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will premiere “New Orleans Humbug,” by White, and “Waldo World in Three Parts” by Waldo.

“’New Orleans Humbug’ was inspired by the 1920s and early 1930s big bands of King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Luis Russell, and Duke Ellington – who all used and expanded elements from classic New Orleans Jazz, like the growl cornet, rich-toned clarinet, and the solo styles of Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and others,” said Dr. White. “The tuba and banjo in the rhythm section are a bridge between early jazz and later big bands which helped to give those transitional orchestras their unique sound.”

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit jazz.org/jazzamericana
Live webcast on jazzlive.com

The leitmotif of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2024-25 season celebrates integration. Through the Jazz Americana concert, the organization acknowledges and honors the diverse backgrounds of the brilliant master practitioners who established and developed the sound of jazz from its origins to the present day. The net effect is a testimony to the power of jazz to illuminate the multiracial democratic ideals of America, bridging generational, ethnic, and cultural divides.

Ticket Information
Tickets for Jazz Americana performances are available on jazz.org, by phone, and in person at the box office. *Please note that a $5.00 Jazz at Lincoln Center Facility Fee applies to all ticket purchases, except for $10 Hot Seats. A $7 handling fee also applies when purchasing tickets from CenterCharge or when purchasing tickets online via jazz.org

All single tickets to Rose Theater concerts can be purchased through jazz.org 24 hours a day or through CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, Ground Floor.

Box Office hours:
Tuesday-Sunday: 10:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m. (or 30 minutes past curtain)
On Wednesdays, prior to a Rose theater concert, the Box Office will open at 10 a.m.

As Wynton Marsalis said at the start of the show Sunday night, “This entire season is dedicated to redefining styles that have much more in common than they have differences.” He continued, “The idea for this season actually came from the great Gerry Mulligan, who, in a conversation with me many years ago, said, ‘Do you ever think of programming a whole season of music where we just take all the segregation out of it, and just play the music the way we envisioned it when we were playing it?’ This season is for you, Gerry.”

So far this year, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has celebrated “Hot Jazz & Swing” and “The Bebop Revolution.” Last weekend’s offering focused on the two major subgenres of jazz — somehow that’s a nicer word than “categories,” to which Duke Ellington famously objected — that were prevalent in the 1950s, “The Cool School & Hard Bop.” The program was curated and hosted by one of the longer-serving veterans of the orchestra, saxophonist Sherman Irby, and the youngest person on stage, Joe Block, a pianist, composer, and relatively recent Juilliard graduate.

Some JALC programs offer new performances of classic orchestrations, as the Swing show did in September. This program, like the Bebop set in November, was a combination of historical charts — they started with Mulligan and George Wallington’s classic “Godchild” from the Miles Davis “Birth of the Cool” band — and newly arranged orchestral interpretations.

This concert also featured more small-group playing than usual, as in Horace Silver’s “Split Kick” from the classic 1954 “Live at Birdland” album by the original Jazz Messengers; Mr. Marsalis and saxophonist Abdias Armenteros formed the front line and drummer Obed Calviere summoned up Art Blakey’s thunderous press rolls.

They followed with Mulligan’s “pianoless quartet” treatment of “Stardust,” with Paul Nedzila on baritone saxophone and two different trumpeters filling Chet Baker’s shoes, Kenny Rampton on Thursday and Ryan Kisor on Friday.

The next piece, a second tune by Silver, “Seńor Blues,” reintroduced a subtle note of globalism in this classic hard bop set piece. Bassist Carlos Henriquez’s arrangement was a perfect expansion of the Silver Quintet’s 1956 recording, with the trombones playing the first 12-bar chorus, then saxophonist Chris Lewis summoning Hank Mobley and trumpeter Marcus Printup doing the same for Donald Byrd. Mr. Printup also shined in Joe Block’s concert-style orchestration of Benny Golson’s memorial piece for Clifford Brown, “I Remember Clifford.”

The evening also included two newly commissioned original works in the hard bop idiom from young pianist-composers, Luther Allison’s “Milk Route” and “For Duke Pearson” by guest pianist Benny Green. The latter is a welcome homage to an overlooked jazz auteur whose music tends to be dismissed for the perverse reason that it’s so listenable and even danceable.

There were major benefactions in the second half. Ted Nash’s treatment of “Wow” by the blind visionary Lennie Tristano was nothing short of remarkable: It suggested how the piece might have been played by the Birth of the Cool band, with sections that replicated the original 1949 recording with alto and tenor saxophonists Alexa Tarrantino and Chris Lewis cast as Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh. There also was a passage featuring flutes and clarinets, and a tenor solo by Mr. Armenteros that accentuated Tristano’s bebop roots.

An even bigger surprise was “Django,” written by John Lewis for the Modern Jazz Quartet, the composer also being a member of the Birth of the Cool band, like Konitz and Mulligan, and also an early supporter of Mr. Marsalis and JALC. I’ve been listening to Wynton Marsalis for 40 years now, and this is perhaps the doggone-est thing I’ve ever heard him play. He described Lewis’s music as “hot and cool at the same time,” and appropriately his highly original duo with pianist Dan Nimmer was all of the above.

Mr. Marsalis played several choruses, alternating back and forth with Mr. Nimmer — and also switching between a cup mute and an open bell — and the inspiration seemed to be something more like “Tom Cat” by King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, before he finished by playing the “Django” melody.

The finale was a rousing treatment of a Jazz Messengers classic, Freddie Hubbard’s 1962 “Thermo.” As arranged for the orchestra by Christian McBride, the piece built to a round-robin piano session for all three keyboardists present, Messrs. Nimmer, Block, and Green, and a stratospheric trumpet solo by guest Jesus Ricardo.

As the crowd stood up and the applause mounted, Mr. Marsalis said something under his breath — it wasn’t exactly an announcement — that seemed to anticipate the imminent shift in the political landscape as well as the technological one: “AI is coming,” he said, “but people still swing.” Amen.

by Will Friedwald
Source: New York Sun

Next week, the jazz trumpeter will be back in the Bay State with much less to prove. He’s won seven Grammys and was the first jazz artist to win a Pulitzer Prize. Marsalis will be featured with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on Wednesday night at Boston Symphony Hall.

Ahead of this performance, Marsalis told WBUR about when he came to Boston in the spring of 1984 as a precocious 22-year-old to perform with John Williams and the Boston Pops. Legendary jazz singer Sarah Vaughan was there, too.

He recalled trying to impress Vaughan by playing an obscure Duke Ellington composition on the piano backstage.

“One section of the song I didn’t really know, so I was kind of working my way through,” he said.

Marsalis said Vaughan, by then a 40-year veteran of the jazz circuit, could hear the uncertainty in his playing.

“ ‘You have to learn these songs off records and in their entirety,’ ” Marsalis remembered her saying to him. Then, “she sat down and played the hell  out of the piano. I remember thinking, ‘damn, she can play the piano like this and is a singer?’ ”

It wasn’t the first time the young Marsalis was both awed and humbled during a visit to Massachusetts. Marsalis came to the state for the first time at the age of 17 as a fellow at Tanglewood, the music hall in the Berkshires where the Boston Symphony Orchestra retreats for the summer.

“I was the youngest one in the fellowship,” Marsalis said. “I was honored to be there. I learned a lot that summer.”

Despite his years of experience, his excitement about jazz is still fresh.

“We can take something that is standard and make it be something you never had before,” he said. “It’s like a person who really can cook — take a recipe or some dish that you’ve had a million times and you’ll be eating it saying, ‘damn, what’s in this?’ ”

by Tiziana Dearing and Rob Lane
Source: WBUR

Today, Jazz at Lincoln Center announced the top high school jazz bands selected to compete in the 30th annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival on May 7-11, 2025, at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Jazz at Lincoln Center is located at Broadway at 60th St., New York, NY.

In honor of the milestone anniversary, the organization also announced plans to expand the unique high school arts education program which has impacted thousands of students, band directors, and the worldwide Essentially Ellington community throughout its 30 year history.

For the first time, Jazz at Lincoln Center has doubled the number of bands, from 15 to 30, selected to compete in the finals. A three day competition in years past, the 2*025 Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival* will take place over five days, which will include two rounds of competition taking place on two stages, Rose Theater and the Appel Room. The final concert and awards ceremony will be held on May 11 at the Metropolitan Opera House, located at 30 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY.

“In the first years of Essentially Ellington, we at Jazz at Lincoln Center were insisting on the integrity of the playing,” said Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Managing and Artistic Director. “Since then, so many great musicians have come through the program, and many of them have had a profound impact on the scene. I’ve also been impacted by the students and the interactions I’ve had with them over these 30 years.” He continued, “The fact that hundreds of thousands — perhaps even millions — of young people around the world have played Duke Ellington’s music, and his music has been distributed so widely through this program, is a tremendous source of joy for me. I truly feel that Jazz at Lincoln Center has contributed something of real value to the world. The music of Duke Ellington is certainly the highest level of what has come out of the United States of America.”

“I’ve watched this program expand and evolve over the years and am deeply proud of how Essentially Ellington has changed the landscape of jazz education,” said Todd Stoll, Jazz at Lincoln Center Vice President of Education. “In a culture always looking ahead to the next best thing, we celebrate the music of Duke Ellington and how it speaks across generations and barriers to bring us together in a way that is both profound and relevant. Congratulations to the directors, parents, and communities that support these students in their efforts to master this music.”

The 2025 Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Finalists are:

• William H. Hall High School (West Hartford, Connecticut)
  Directed by Phil Giampietro

• Youth Jazz Ensemble of DuPage (Wheaton, Illinois)
  Directed by Robert Blazek

• Bothell High School (Bothell, Washington)
  Directed by Philip Dean

• Byron Center High School (Byron Center, Michigan)
  Directed by Marc Townley

• Carroll Senior High School (Southlake, Texas)
  Directed by David Lown

• Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts (West Palm Beach, Florida)
  Directed by Christopher M. De León

• King Philip Regional High School (Wrentham, Massachusetts)
  Directed by Michael Keough

• Agoura High School (Agoura Hills, California)
  Directed by Robert Hackett

• Jazz House Kids (Montclair, New Jersey)
  Directed by Nathan Eklund

• Osceola County School for the Arts (Kissimmee, Florida)
  Directed by Jason Anderson

• Rio Americano High School (Sacramento, California)
  Directed by Josh Murray

• Sun Prairie High School (Sun Prairie, Wisconsin)
  Directed by Matt McVeigh

• Susan E. Wagner High School (Staten Island, New York)
  Directed by Paul Corn

• Newton South High School (Newton, Massachusetts)
  Directed by Lisa Linde

• Memphis Central High School (Memphis, Tennessee)
  Directed by Ollie Liddell

• Plano West Senior High School (Plano, Texas)
  Directed by Preston Pierce

• Stanford Jazz Workshop (Stanford, California)
  Directed by Michael Galisatus

• Hoover High School (Hoover, Alabama)
  Directed by Sallie White

• New World School of the Arts (Miami, Florida)
  Directed by Jim Gasior

• Mountlake Terrace High School (Mountlake Terrace, Washington)
  Directed by Darin Faul

• Garfield High School (Seattle, Washington)
  Directed by Jared Sessink

• Newark Academy (Livingston, New Jersey)
  Directed by Julius Tolentino

• Tucson Jazz Institute (Tucson, Arizona)
  Directed by Brice Winston

• Roosevelt High School (Seattle, Washington)
  Directed by Hannah Mowry

• Orange County School of the Arts (Santa Ana, California)
  Directed by John Reynolds

• Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music (Bronx, New York)
  Directed by Penelope Smetters-Jacono

• Ann Arbor Huron High School (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
  Directed by Robert Ash

• Blackburn High School (Victoria, Australia)
  Directed by Andrew O’Connell

• Tomisato High School (Chiba, Japan)
  Directed by Masaki Shinohara

• Sant Andreu Jazz Band (Barcelona, Spain)
  Directed by Joan Chamorro

These finalists were selected from 127 schools, a record number, that submitted recordings of select tunes from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s R. Theodore Ammon Archives and Music Library.

In addition to highlighting the top high school jazz bands, the festival will recognize the winner of the 13th Annual Essentially Ellington Dr. J. Douglas White Student Composition and Arranging Contest. The 2025 winner is Ethan Liao from San Francisco University High School in San Francisco, CA. Liao will receive a $1,000 cash prize and the winning composition, entitled “By Candlelight,” will be recorded by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The prize also includes a trip to the 2025 Competition & Festival for a composition lesson with Grammy Award-winning artist Ted Nash.

The annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival brings musicians from across North America to Jazz at Lincoln Center to spend several days immersed in workshops, jam sessions, rehearsals and performances. This year, for the first time ever, three international guest bands will join to compete on stage in Rose Theater.

The top-placing bands will be chosen by several judging panels comprising distinguished jazz musicians and historians, including Joseph Jefferson, Ingrid Jensen, Sherrie Maricle, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Ulysses Owens, Catherine Russell, Reggie Thomas, Camille Thurman, Liesel Whitaker, and others to be announced.

One of the most innovative education events in the world, the Essentially Ellington program and resources for students and band directors are free of charge and aim to elevate musicianship, broaden perspectives, and inspire performance through the music of jazz icon Duke Ellington.

The program aims to promote appreciation for jazz music and American vernacular music and has served as a major talent incubator for many alumni who have gone on to form a new generation of professional musicians band directors, and industry figures including Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra musicians Obed Calvaire, Carlos Henriquez, Alexa Tarantino, GRAMMY Award winner Samara Joy, “Saturday Night Live” band member Summer Camargo, and renowned musicians Aaron Diehl, Tatum Greenblatt, Chris Lewis, Riley Mulherkar, Philip Norris, among many more.

Essentially Ellington Festival events, including the final concert featuring the top-placing bands and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, will stream live on jazzlive.com. Tickets will be available for purchase in the coming months. For more information, visit jazz.org/ee.

Since its inception in 1987, Jazz at Lincoln Center has produced an extensive range of jazz educational and advocacy programs for all ages. For the 30th year, the organization’s Essentially Ellington program spreads the message of Duke Ellington’s music, leadership, and collective orientation, providing high school ensembles with free transcriptions of original Duke Ellington recordings – accompanied by rehearsal guides, original recordings, professional instruction, and more – to thousands of schools and community bands in 58 countries. More than 7,000 high school bands have benefitted from free charts and resources. The multi-day festival provides students access to workshops, jam sessions, rehearsals, and performances.

Jazz at Lincoln Center proudly acknowledges its 2024-25 season partner: Bloomberg Philanthropies

A very special thanks to Jody and John Arnhold for their extraordinary support of Jazz at Lincoln Center, including its education initiatives.

We proudly recognize leadership support from Dalio Philanthropies; Howard Gilman Foundation, Inc.; Mellody Hobson and George Lucas; Michele and Mark Mandel; and the Zou Family Fund.

Leadership support for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s concert season
is provided by Lynne and Richard Pasculano.

Founding leadership support for Essentially Ellington is provided by
the Jack and Susan Rudin Educational and Scholarship Fund and Gail and Alfred Engelberg.

Leadership support for Essentially Ellington is provided by the Hearst Foundations, Inc.;
the Augustine Foundation; and the Weissman Family Foundation.

Major support for Essentially Ellington is provided by the Michelle Deal Winfield;
the King-White Family Foundation and the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation.

Generous support for Essentially Ellington is provided by the Susan Rudin Charitable Fund;
the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Funds; and Samuel Korach.

The Essentially Ellington Student Composition Contest is made possible through a generous gift by
Dr. J. Douglas White and the King-White Family Foundation.

Artists, schedules, and venues are subject to change.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States. Over the decades, cultural and artistic activities, especially musical events, have played a pivotal role in nurturing and strengthening these ties. A historic tour by the Philadelphia Orchestra back in 1973 was one of the first signals of this cultural thaw, and over time, both countries have increasingly interwoven their musical landscapes.

On October 9, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) hosted the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, marking the beginning of Marsalis’ extensive tour through several key Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou. The performances included innovative arrangements of traditional Chinese melodies, which served as bridge-building experiences, bringing elements of jazz to Chinese audiences eager to explore this unique fusion.

During the Shenzhen concert on October 15, the orchestra introduced jazz arrangements of well-known Chinese folk songs, such as the beloved theme from the classic novel adaptation “Journey to the West.” Such blends reflect Marsalis’ creative aspirations shaped by his own interests and interactions with Chinese culture. He remarked, “Changes in instrumentation and harmony have enhanced the auditory experience of the folk music,” highlighting how jazz can enrich traditional Chinese tunes.

Yet, the significance of cultural performances might be overshadowed by the serious humanitarian crises occurring globally. Recently, the U.S. has faced widespread criticism for its support of Israel during the Israel-Palestine conflict. A cartoon published by China Daily, titled “Preaching Rights While Destroying Humans,” starkly juxtaposes Uncle Sam’s rhetoric on human rights against the backdrop of casualties from the conflict, especially emphasizing the plight of civilians, including significant losses among children. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees reported alarming statistics, indicating nearly 46,000 fatalities since the onset of the crisis last October. The agency’s claims are dire, noting one child dies every hour due to the relentless bombardments.

China Radio International echoed this sentiment, stating, “When the destroyer of humanity preaches about human rights!” This pointed critique aligns with broader concerns over how human rights narratives clash with geopolitical actions, particularly when the U.S. offers billions in military support to Israel, perpetuating suffering among affected Palestinian populations.

Returning to the cultural exchange, Marsalis expressed his deep connection with China, sharing not just his musical experiences but also his admiration for the cultural richness of the country. “I love the Chinese culture,” he stated. For Marsalis, the diversity and depth of Chinese history resonate deeply, as he collects coins from China dating back decades and regularly interacts with the younger generation of musicians eager to learn from his experiences. His trip included mentoring young musicians at the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, emphasizing the importance of arts education.

Huang Ye, a clarinetist and one of his students, reflected on how Marsalis has impacted his musical growth. “Wynton has not only taught me the techniques of music, but also how to be an artist with a sense of responsibility,” Huang noted. An embodiment of the cross-cultural influence, Huang is working on integrating aspects of Kun Opera, one of China’s traditional performing arts, with jazz, showcasing the essence of collaborative creativity between American jazz and Chinese classical music traditions.

Despite the potential for cultural exchanges to soothe diplomatic tensions, underlying issues related to governance and human rights loom large. The impact of performances like those of Marsalis should not only be measured through the applause they garner but also through the substantive connections they forge between nations through a shared appreciation for music and the arts. What remains clear is the persistent need for thoughtful dialogue and cooperation as both countries navigate their complex relationship.

Such cultural encounters remind us how art transcends borders and how it plays a role not only as entertainment but as a medium for connection and mutual respect. The hope remains—while performances and exchanges occur, calls for genuine human rights progress and self-reflection by all parties involved remain as pertinent as ever.

Source: The Pinnacle Gazette

BEIJING, Dec. 25 (Xinhua) — Jazz and Chinese folk songs may seem worlds apart, as distant from each other as the space between China and the United States.

However, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by U.S. trumpet master Wynton Marsalis, brought to Chinese audiences an amazing blend of the two arts during their recent China tour. Over four weeks, up to Nov. 3, the orchestra staged performances in multiple cities including Beijing, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, captivating fans eager to experience the latest trends in the world of jazz.

In Shenzhen, the ensemble performed jazz arrangements of popular Chinese folk music like “Where’s the Road that You’ll Take” for the first time. The arrangement is the theme song from a renowned TV adaptation of “Journey to the West,” a classic novel centering on Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King.

With his hallmark cross-cultural flair, Marsalis, the artistic director and leader of the world-renowned big band, infused “Horse Racing” — a classic piece of Chinese folk music traditionally performed on the erhu — with a jazz interpretation, leading his ensemble in collaboration with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra.

The creative, experimental blending of jazz with Chinese musical heritage, as well as selections from Symphony No. 4 “The Jungle,” Marsalis’ acclaimed original work, wowed an audience of around 1,400 at Shenzhen Concert Hall on Oct. 15.

“Changes in instrumentation and harmony have enhanced the auditory experience of the folk music,” Shenzhen resident Liu Gang said, expressing appreciation for the richness of the performances.

The pieces performed in Shenzhen represent the latest results of Marsalis’ deep dive into Chinese musical heritage, an interest initially sparked by the influence of his Chinese friends.

Acknowledging the difficulty in fathoming the meaning of melodies in another culture, Marsalis told Xinhua in an exclusive interview during his recent tour that he had “listened to Chinese traditional music many times.”

Over time, the nine-time Grammy Award-winner reflected, he had tuned into Chinese folk music; the instruments, the sound of the space in the music and the lyrics and the directness of the melodic nature all resonated deeply with him.

This kind of music is “distilled through a lot of people over a long time,” he said, adding that he also likes Chinese folk music that features high-pitched voices because it has “a very penetrating quality and a kind of clear emotion.”

The orchestra arrived in Beijing — the first leg of their tour — on Oct. 7, ready for the 27th Beijing Music Festival.

At the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Marsalis and other artists in the orchestra performed the “Shanghai Suite,” an intriguing album composed to blend jazz with Chinese mythology, folklore and traditional musical heritage. The performance was the first time an audience in the Chinese capital had heard the arrangements live.

The 9-movement suite, inspired by Marsalis’ experiences in Shanghai, premiered at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai in 2019 and was staged in Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York in 2022.

One movement called “Hot Pot!” was particularly memorable. Paying tribute to its namesake culinary inspiration, Marsalis said he enjoys this Chinese meal partly because “it’s like a dish we have in New Orleans called gumbo, everything in one pot.” “And also I like hotpot because it’s such a communal dish. I like that people get around,” he added.

Marsalis reflected on the sheer variety of Chinese cuisines, confessing that he is also a fan of Beijing Roast Duck, also known as Peking Duck, and often gets roast duck on New Year’s Day in the United States.

There is another highlight in the suite called “Li Bai’s Blues,” which reveals his enthusiasm about Chinese poetry.

Li was a renowned Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet. At Marsalis’ home back in New York, there is an English-translated anthology of ancient Chinese poetry. Among the authors, he especially felt kinship with Li.

“I like Li Bai’s embrace of life,” Marsalis said. “He embraces the ephemeral nature of life. We’re here, we’re gone.”

“And I like also Li Bai’s ability to accept as it comes,” he added.

The poems of Li, a household name in China, much like the Monkey King, have been translated into multiple languages and are a treasure trove for many people studying Chinese culture.

“I love the Chinese culture,” Marsalis said, adding that with a deep history and rich culture, China is “one of the great cultures and countries in the world.”

Though he did not visit China until the 1990s, Marsalis’ connection with the country dates back to the 1960s, when he was still in short trousers.

“I have a coin collection and in the coin collection are some Chinese coins,” he recollected, adding that at that time he never thought he would go to China.

More than 50 years on, he has traveled to China on multiple occasions and boasts a growing fanbase here. He said that there are many things he likes about today’s China, including the increase of trees, the modern railway system, the nightlife and the ever-evolving skyline.

Believing that everything is connected to people, Marsalis highly values the role played by people-to-people exchanges. “A building is a building. But if somebody takes you through it and shows you and tells you, then it becomes more of an experience.”

As one of the most influential figures in modern jazz, Marsalis has been working hard to bring people together through music throughout his busy, prolific career.

Over the decades, Marsalis, also director of Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School, has made education a significant mission and devoted much of his career to teaching and advocating music education, assisting young musicians from various backgrounds. On Oct. 22, he interacted with young musicians at Hangzhou-based Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, tutoring them in improvisation techniques.

Huang Ye, a Gen-Z clarinetist, first met Marsalis during a high school jazz contest 10 years ago. Today, the trumpet master remains an inspiration for him. Since 2017, Huang has worked with Marsalis on many programs, performing with the U.S. artist on some movements of the Shanghai Suite.

Marsalis’ performances in China are a significant access point for many people into the world of jazz, said Huang, adding that he is working on programs that integrate Chinese musical heritage, such as elements of Kun Opera, into jazz, and encourage more Chinese musicians to perform their works in the United States.

“Wynton has not only taught me the techniques of music, but also how to be an artist with a sense of responsibility,” Huang said

by Xinhua writers Wang Xiaopeng and Shi Yifei
Source: XinhuanNet

Cool School & Hard Bop featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis takes place in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater on Thursday, Jan. 16 through Saturday, Jan. 18 at 7:30 p.m.

Rose Theater is located in Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, at Broadway at 60th St. in New York, New York. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit jazz.org

For three nights, guests will enjoy a dynamic program that combines vitality and restraint. The performance showcases big band and small group arrangements performed by members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and special guest pianist, Benny Green, a veteran of bands led by such masters as Art Blakey, Ray Brown and Betty Carter.

There will be a free pre-concert discussion nightly at 6:30 p.m. hosted by Seton Hawkins, Jazz at Lincoln Center Director of Education Resources and Public Programming.

Cool School & Hard Bop is available on-demand. For Livestream information: jazzlive.com

So it locked its sights onto something especially rich and meaningful: One year ago this month, music director Jader Bignamini led the DSO in three performances of Wynton Marsalis’ musically imaginative, historically dynamic “Blues Symphony” as an audio team captured the concerts live inside Orchestra Hall.

Now their work is making its way to the wider public. “Blues Symphony” will be released Jan. 24 by Pentatone, kicking off a long-term deal with the Dutch record label and reasserting the Detroit Symphony’s illustrious legacy in the world of recorded music.

“It sends a message of what we’re about and what this orchestra can play,” said Erik Rönmark, the DSO’s president and CEO.

The album will be issued on CD along with digital versions in high-resolution stereo and surround-sound formats, including Dolby Atmos.

Perhaps most tantalizing for audiophiles, “Blues Symphony” will also be released as a vinyl LP, an undertaking that finds the DSO turning to a Midtown Detroit neighbor: Jack White’s Third Man Pressing plant on Canfield, which will manufacture the limited-edition run.

The vinyl release will be available exclusively through the DSO’s new Gold Record Collective, a membership club that will help finance the orchestra’s reinvigorated recording agenda. The project will be celebrated with a February launch party at the Third Man complex.

“It’s one of those recordings that’s a moment for us,” said Rönmark. “It’s our first with Jader — this monster of a piece, these seven movements about the history of the blues in different iterations — and it’s a great way of presenting ourselves.”

The album’s primary cover is a playful take on a vintage photo from Orchestra Hall’s spell as the Paradise Theater in the 1940s, when the venue became Detroit’s go-to spot for jazz shows and visiting Black musicians. The black-and-white image of the theater marquee — which originally captured an upcoming Duke Ellington concert — has been altered to display “Wynton Marsalis, Blues Symphony.”

The vinyl edition will feature yet-to-be-revealed artwork by Detroit’s Judy Bowman, described by Rönmark as “a very Detroit cover” with imagery including the downtown skyline, the Joe Louis fist monument, Orchestra Hall and more.

“Blues Symphony,” premiered by Marsalis in 2009, is a journey both chronological and geographic, capturing the Black American music story from the colonial era through the 20th century’s Great Migration and its urbanizing of the blues sound. Touted by the DSO as “a triumphant symphonic ode to the power of the blues,” the piece weaves in elements of marches, ragtime, spirituals and Marsalis’ best-known idiom, jazz music.

That jazz connection figured prominently in the DSO’s choice to spotlight the Marsalis work, starting with Detroit’s vibrant jazz legacy and the orchestra’s own history with the form, going back to its first youth ensembles half a century ago. For Bignamini, the piece “united my love of jazz’s improvisational colors with my passion for conducting,” as he writes in the liner notes.

“When you talk about recording for orchestras now, so much is about: How do you show off the artistry? How do you highlight different styles of music?” said Rönmark. “And for us — with this being Jader’s first recording — how do you select a work that stands out in the catalog?”

Last December’s concert sessions came 18 months after the DSO and Bignamini first explored “Blues Symphony” onstage at Orchestra Hall. Recording was overseen by the Boston firm Soundmirror, with Rönmark and Michigan native Sean Hickey of Pentatone as executive producers.

Marsalis was intimately involved in the process, listening back to daily audio, exchanging detailed creative notes with Bignamini, and helping shape the nuances of the musicians’ performances.

“He added so much to the quality of every soloist, every principal, we have here,” Bignamini told the Free Press at the time. “He was not surprised — he was incredibly happy about our work.”

Marsalis will play a big role in promotion of the upcoming release, Rönmark said.

“Blues Symphony” is the latest chapter in a nearly century-long album history for the DSO, a legacy that blossomed in the 1950s under music director Paul Paray while helping bolster the orchestra’s international profile. It’s the first recording by the DSO since 2016’s John Williams’ Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra, released digitally by Naxos Records last year.

And it marks a renewed emphasis by the Detroit institution on record projects, a mission that aims to keep the DSO on the vanguard of its industry while attracting and retaining musicians. “Blues Symphony” will be submitted for Grammy Awards consideration next year, Rönmark said.

The momentum continues to build: In November, engineers captured the DSO’s performances of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, conducted by Bignamini, and more recording sessions are in the works for 2025.

“We have a very diverse repertoire, and you want your recordings to reflect your programming,” Rönmark said.

Bignamini, the charismatic Italian conductor appointed music director by the DSO in 2020, was signed to a five-year contract extension shortly after last December’s “Blues Symphony” sessions. He called the Marsalis album project “the first step of a long path” that will document his orchestra’s work for posterity.

“It’s very helpful for the quality of the orchestra — every time you record, it’s a little stressful,” he told the Free Press at the time. “But after the past week, I spoke with several musicians (who said) they’re very happy to have this opportunity to show what happens here and the level here in Detroit.”

by Brian McCollum
Source: Detroit Free Press