Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis
Background information
Birth name Tyrone Learson Marsalis
Born October 18, 1961 (1961-10-18) (age 49)
New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Genres Jazz, Classical, Jazz poetry
Occupations Composer, Trumpeter, Artistic Director Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra
Instruments Trumpet
Years active 1980–present
Labels Columbia, Sony
Associated acts English Chamber Orchestra
Website www.WyntonMarsalis.com

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American jazz and Western classical trumpeter and composer. He is Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted the appreciation of Classical and Jazz music, often focusing on young audiences.

As a Jazz performer and composer he has made display of his extensive knowledge about jazz and jazz history and for being a classical virtuoso. As of 2006, he has made sixteen classical and more than thirty jazz recordings, has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for a jazz recording.

Contents

Life and career

Marsalis was born to Dolores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Marsalis, Jr., a New Orleans-based music teacher and pianist. He is the second of six sons: Branford (1960), Wynton (1961), Ellis III (1964), Delfeayo (1965), Mboya Kinyatta (1971), and Jason (1977). Branford, Delfeayo, and Jason are also jazz musicians. Ellis is a poet, photographer and network engineer based in Baltimore. Mboya was born with autism.[1]

Marsalis demonstrated an aptitude and interest for music as a youth. Al Hirt gave a six-year-old Marsalis his first trumpet. At age eight he performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by banjoist, Danny Barker. At fourteen he was invited to perform with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During his high school years attending De La Salle High School, Marsalis was a member of the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, under the direction of Peter Dombourian, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony and on weekends he performed in a jazz band as well as in the popular local funk band, the Creators.

Marsalis moved to New York City to attend the Juilliard School of Music in 1978. Two years later in 1980, he joined the Jazz Messengers to study under drummer and bandleader, Art Blakey, during which time Marsalis learned from Blakey how to lead a band and how to perform with intensity and consistency. In 1981, Marsalis toured with the Herbie Hancock quartet throughout the USA and Japan, as well as performing at the Newport Jazz Festival with Herbie. During his career Marsalis has played with Jazz artists including, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Edison, Clark Terry, and Sonny Rollins.

Marsalis assembled bands and performed over 120 concerts for ten consecutive years. But as audiences for Jazz concerts aged and shrank,[2], Marsalis has given lectures and music workshops. Collaborators and students at Marsalis's workshops include James Carter, Christian McBride, Roy Hargrove, Harry Connick, Jr. (Marsalis plays on Connick's album 30, and Your Songs), Nicholas Payton, Eric Reed and Eric Lewis. Marsalis has been commissioned to compose for dance companies including Garth Fagan Dance, Peter Martins at the New York City Ballet, Twyla Tharp for the American Ballet Theatre, and also for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.

Marsalis collaborated with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 1995 to compose the string quartet, At The Octoroon Balls, and again in 1998 to create a response to the Stravinsky: A Soldier's Tale with his composition, A Fiddler's Tale.

In 1997 his epic oratorio on slavery, Blood on the Fields, became the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize in music.

In 2006, Marsalis's US$833,686 annual salary as Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center drew negative attention in an article published by Reader's Digest magazine regarding overspending by non-profit organizations.[3][4] Marsalis is a bachelor with sons by Candace Stanley and another son with actress Victoria Rowell.[5]

Musical accomplishments

Marsalis compositions and playing is represented on a quartet of Sony Classical releases, At the Octoroon Balls: String Quartet No. 1, A Fiddler's Tale, Reel Time and Sweet Release and Ghost Story: Two More Ballets by Wynton Marsalis. All are volumes of an eight-CD series, titled Swinging Into The 21st, a set of albums released in 1999-2000 featuring original compositions and standards, from jazz to classical to ballet, including Jelly Roll Morton, Igor Stravinsky and Thelonious Monk along with Marsalis.

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

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

Criticism and controversy

"So you're the police, huh?" - Miles Davis upon first meeting Marsalis.

[6]

Marsalis has been criticized by some jazz musicians and writers as a minor and limited trumpeter who pontificates on jazz, as he did in his 1988 opinion piece in the New York Times "What Jazz Is - and Isn't" [7][8]

Jazz Critic Scott Yanow praised Marsalis's talent but questioned his "selective knowledge of jazz history considering post-1965 avant-garde playing to be outside of jazz and 1970s fusion to be barren."[9] Trumpeter Lester Bowie said of Marsalis's, "If you retread what's gone before, even if it sounds like jazz, it could be anathema to the spirit of jazz."[10] In his 1997 book Blue: The Murder of Jazz Eric Nisenson argues that Marsalis's focus on a narrow portion of jazz's past stifled growth and innovation.[11] In 1997 pianist Keith Jarrett criticized Marsalis saying "I've never heard anything Wynton played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me."[12] Pierre Sprey, president of jazz record company Mapleshade Records, said in 2001 that "When Marsalis was nineteen, he was a fine jazz trumpeter...But he was getting his tail beat off every night in Art Blakey's band. I don't think he could keep up. And finally he retreated to safe waters. He's a good classical trumpeter and thus he sees jazz as being a classical Music. He has no clue what's going on now."[13] Bassist Stanley Clarke said "All the guys that are criticizing—like Wynton Marsalis and those guys — I would hate to be around to hear those guys playing on top of a groove!"[14] In his autobiography Miles Davis - whom Marsalis said had left jazz and "went into rock" [15] - hedged his praise of Marsalis suggesting that he was unoriginal. He also found him too competitive, saying "Wynton thinks playing music is about blowing people up on stage." In 1986, in Vancouver, Davis stopped his band to eject from the stage an uninvited Marsalis. Echoing Clarke's comment, Davis said "Wynton can't play the kind of shit we were playing", and twice told Marsalis to leave the stage saying "Get the fuck off."[16]

Personal insults have marked some exchanges: besides insinuating that Davis was a cynical opportunist pandering to audiences, Marsalis said Davis dressed like a "buffoon", while trumpeter, and former bandmate in the Modern Jazz Quartet, Lester Bowie called Marsalis "brain dead", "mentally-ill" and "trapped in some opinions that he had at age 21...because he's been paid to."[15][8] In return Marsalis said Bowie was "another guy who never really could play."[15]

Ken Burns' Jazz

Marsalis was criticized for pressing his neo-classicist opinions of jazz as producer and on-screen commentator in the Ken Burns documentary Jazz (2001). The documentary focused primarily on Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong among others, while ignoring other jazz artists. David Adler said that "Wynton's coronation in the film is not merely biased. It is not just aesthetically grating. It is unethical, given his integral role in the making of the very film that is praising him to the heavens."[17]

Political activism

New Orleans

Marsalis emerged as a New Orleans booster in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by making public speeches and television ads to increase public awareness of the importance of rebuilding New Orleans, and also to encourage tourism of Louisiana. Marsalis also organized a large benefit at Jazz at Lincoln Center for musicians and other New Orleanians affected by Hurricane Katrina. The benefit, called Higher Ground, featured Cassandra Wilson, Diana Krall, Dianne Reeves, Norah Jones, Victor Goines, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Fantasia.

Marsalis was interviewed in Spike Lee's award-winning documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.

In the 2006 New Orleans mayoral election, Marsalis endorsed Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu over incumbent Ray Nagin. Both Democratic Party members, Nagin and Landrieu were the top contenders after the jungle primary. Neither gained a simple majority, and in a runoff election Nagin won. Landrieu returned to the office of Lieutenant Governor the following year.

Wynton sits on the Advisory Committee of the Board of Directors of The Jazz Foundation of America. [18] Wynton has continued to work with the Jazz Foundation to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians including musicians that survived Hurricane Katrina. His organization Jazz at Lincoln Center has raised funding through “High Ground Campaign” [19] to assist the Jazz Foundation of America in aiding musicians affected by Katrina giving a total of $3,000,000 since 2001.

International politics

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

Awards and recognition

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

Marsalis has been awarded the 2005 National Medal of Arts of the United States, the Grand Prix du Disque of the Charles Cros Academy and the Edison Award of the Netherlands, and was elected an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in Britain. He has received several honorary doctoral degrees, and a variety of other recognitions from Brandeis University, Brown University, Columbia University, Denison University, Harvard University, Haverford College, Johns Hopkins University, the Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Northwestern University, Princeton University, the University of Miami, Southern Methodist University(SMU) and Yale University.[20]

Marsalis, with his father and brothers, are group recipients of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award.[21]

Marsalis has toured 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica, and nearly five million copies of his recordings have been sold worldwide.

Accolades

Music Awards

Pulitzer Prize for Music

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group

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

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo

Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children

Discography

With Art Blakey:

  • 1981 Album of the Year
  • 1981 Straight Ahead

With Chico Freeman:

  • 1981 Destiny's Dance

With Herbie Hancock:

  • 1981 Quartet

With Joe Henderson:

  • 1992 "Lush Life: The Music of Billy Stayhorn"

As Leader:

  • 1981 Wynton Marsalis
  • 1982 Fathers and Sons Columbia Records #FC 37972.
  • 1983 Trumpet Concertos (Haydn, Mozart, Hummel)
  • 1983 Think of One
  • 1984 Haydn: Three Favorite Concertos (with Yo-Yo Ma and Cho-Liang Lin)
  • 1984 Baroque Music for Trumpet (Purcell, Handel, Torelli, etc.)
  • 1984 Hot House Flowers
  • 1985 Black Codes (From the Underground)
  • 1985 J Mood
  • 1986 Marsalis Standard Time, Vol. I
  • 1986 Live at Blues Alley
  • 1986 Tomasi: Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra (Tomasi, Jolivet)
  • 1987 Carnaval
  • 1989 The Majesty of the Blues
  • 1989 Best of Wynton Marsalis
  • 1989 Copland/Vaughan Williams/Hindemith (Eastman Wind Ensemble)
  • 1989 Portrait of Wynton Marsalis
  • 1989 Crescent City Christmas Card
  • 1989 The Majesty of the Blues
  • 1989 Baroque Music for Trumpets
  • 1990 Tune In Tomorrow... The Original Soundtrack
  • 1990 Standard Time Vol. 3: The Resolution of Romance
  • 1991 Thick In The South: Soul Gestures In Southern Blue, Vol. 1
  • 1991 Uptown Ruler: Soul Gestures In Southern Blue, Vol. 2
  • 1991 Levee Low Moan: Soul Gestures In Southern Blue, Vol. 3
  • 1991 Standard Time Vol. 2: Intimacy Calling
  • 1992 Concert for Planet Earth Blue Interlude
  • 1992 Baroque Duet - A film by Susan Froemke * Peter Gelb * Albert Maysles * Pat Jaffe
  • 1992 Baroque Duet - with Kathleen Battle
  • 1992 Citi Movement
  • 1993 On the Twentieth Century…: Hindemith, Poulenc, Bernstein, Ravel
  • 1994 In This House, On This Morning
  • 1994 Greatest Hits: Handel
  • 1995 Why Toes Tap: Marsalis on Rhythm
  • 1995 Listening for Clues: Marsalis on Form
  • 1995 Tackling the Monster: Marsalis on Practice (VHS)
  • 1995 Sousa to Satchmo: Marsalis on the Jazz Band
  • 1995 Greatest Hits: Baroque
  • 1995 Joe Cool's Blues (with Ellis Marsalis)
  • 1996 In Gabriel's Garden
  • 1997 Liberty!
  • 1997 Jump Start and Jazz
  • 1997 Blood on the Fields
  • 1998 Classic Wynton
  • 1998 The Midnight Blues: Standard Time, Vol. 5
  • 1999 Reeltime
  • 1999 Mr. Jelly Lord: Standard Time, Vol. 6
  • 1999 Listen to the Storyteller
  • 1999 Sweet Release and Ghost Story: Two More Ballets by Wynton Marsalis
  • 1999 Los Elefantes (with Arturo Sandoval),
  • 1999 At the Octoroon Balls - String Quartet No. 1; A Fiddler's Tale Suite, Franz Joseph Haydn
  • 1999 Big Train (The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra)
  • 1999 Marsalis Plays Monk: Standard Time, Vol. 4
  • 2000 The London Concert
  • 2000 The Marciac Suite
  • 2001 Classical Hits,
  • 2001 Popular Songs: The Best Of Wynton Marsalis
  • 2002 All Rise
  • 2002 Trumpet Concertos
  • 2002 Classic Kathleen Battle: A Portrait
  • 2003 Half Past Autumn Suite Irvin Mayfield, Basin Street Records
  • 2003 Mark O'Connor's Hot Swing Trio: In Full Swing
  • 2004 The Magic Hour
  • 2004 Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
  • 2005 Live at the House of Tribes
  • 2007 From the Plantation to the Penitentiary
  • 2007 Here...Now (Internet-Only Album)
  • 2008 Standards & Ballads (compilation: 1983-1999)
  • 2008 Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis: Two Men With The Blues
  • 2009 He And She
  • 2009 Christmas Jazz Jam

References

  1. ↑ Marsalis family jazzes it up for autism, Herald Sun, March 27, 2007, hosted at autismconnect.org.
  2. ↑ Gary Panetta. "Audiences decline nationally for arts events". Peoria Journal Star. http://www2.pjstar.com/index.php/panetta/article/audiences_decline_nationally_for_arts_events_nea_says/. Retrieved 2010-04-11. 
  3. ↑ "Jazz at Lincoln Center". Charity Navigator. http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/3922.htm. Retrieved 2007-02-02. 
  4. ↑ Michael Crowley (2006). "That's Outrageous-Charity Chiselers". Reader's Digest. http://www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=28683. Retrieved 2007-02-02. 
  5. ↑ "All about Jazz - Chapter One: Yes, Yes". http://www.allaboutjazz.com/journalists/gourse3a.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-11. 
  6. ↑ Maya Jaggi (2009-12-21). "Blowing up a storm". London: guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/blog/2009/dec/21/jazz-purist-found-wynton-marsalis. Retrieved 2010-05-07. 
  7. ↑ Wynton Marsalis (1988-07-31). "What Jazz Is - and Isn't". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/31/arts/music-what-jazz-is-and-isn-t.html. Retrieved 2010-05-07. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Sam Prestianni. "What Wynton Doesn't Hear: Lester Bowie explains". SF Weekly. http://www.sfweekly.com/1996-09-11/music/what-wynton-doesn-t-hear/. Retrieved 2010-05-07. 
  9. ↑ Scott Yanow. "Wynton Marsalis Biography". allmusic. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:3e8n1vk8zzua~T1. Retrieved 2007-05-20. 
  10. ↑ Jaggi, Maya (25 January 2003). "Blowing up a storm". London: The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0%2C11710%2C881770%2C00.html. Retrieved 2007-05-20. 
  11. ↑ Nisenson, Eric (1997). Blue: The Murder of Jazz. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312167857. 
  12. ↑ Excerpts from an article by Andrew Solomon in the New York Times Magazine, Feb. 9, 1997
  13. ↑ Jeffrey St. Clair (28 February 2001). "Now, That's Not Jazz". Gerry Hemingway. http://www.gerryhemingway.com/jazzburn.html. Retrieved 2007-02-02. 
  14. ↑ Sholto Byrnes. "Stanley Clarke: The Bass Line Heard Around The World". Jazz Forum: the magazine of the International Jazz Federation, Poland. http://www.artistwd.com/joyzine/music/clarke/clarke.php. Retrieved 2010-05-07. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Sholto Byrnes (2003-01-12). "Wynton Marsalis: Miles Davis? He was a rock star". London: Independent News and Media Limited. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/wynton-marsalis-miles-davis-he-was-a-rock-star-601414.html. Retrieved 2010-05-06. 
  16. ↑ Davis, Miles and Quincy Troupe. Miles: The Autobiography. Simon & Schuster. 1990. ISBN 0-671-72582-3
  17. ↑ David R. Adler. "Ken Burns' "Jazz": The Episode Ten Fiasco". AllAboutJazz.com. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/articles/arti0201_03.htm. Retrieved 2008-01-17. 
  18. ↑ jazzfoundation.org. 2009-13-10. URL: http://www.jazzfoundation.org/Gala_Sponsorship_Packages.pdf. Accessed: 2009-13-10. (Archived by jazzfoundation.org at http://www.jazzfoundation.org/Gala_Sponsorship_Packages.pdf)
  19. ↑ wyntonmarsalis.org. 2009-13-10. URL: http://www.wyntonmarsalis.org/2008/03/05/playing-our-parts-concert/. Accessed: 2009-13-10. (Archived by wyntonmarsalis.org at http://www.wyntonmarsalis.org/2008/03/05/playing-our-parts-concert/)
  20. ↑ "Contemporary Black Biography Wynton Marsalis, Jazz Musician". Pomona College Hart Institute. http://hart.pomona.edu/marsalis.shtml. Retrieved 2007-02-02. 
  21. ↑ National Endowment for the Arts (June 24, 2010). "National Endowment for the Arts Announces the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters". Washington: National Endowment for the Arts. http://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/2011-NEA-Jazz-Masters-Announced.html. Retrieved July 19, 2010. "For the first time in the program's 29-year history, in addition to four individual awards, the NEA will present a group award to the Marsalis family, New Orleans' venerable first family of jazz." 
  22. ↑ Recipients Of The Algur H. Meadows Award For Excellence In The Arts

External links