Wynton Marsalis - Biography
By Stuart Kremsky
Trumpeter, composer, bandleader, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis is probably the most well-known living jazz musician in America. Among his many honors is the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Music, awarded for his oratorio Blood on the Fields, and the first for a jazz recording. An educator and tireless promoter of the music he loves, he has encouraged countless young musicians. In addition to his many accomplishments in jazz, he is also a well-regarded classical trumpeter.
Wynton Learson Marsalis was born in New Orleans on October 18, 1961. His father, Ellis Marsalis, is a prominent pianist and teacher in that city, and three of Wynton’s brothers (saxophonist Branford, trombonist Delfeayo, and drummer Jason) are also professional musicians. The young Marsalis showed interest in music from the start. He was six when Al Hirt gave him his first horn, but he says he didn’t get “serious about the instrument” until he was twelve. He developed rapidly, winning a competition playing Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto with the New Orleans Philharmonic when he was fourteen. While still in high school, he was performing with community bands, a brass quintet, jazz casuals, and a popular funk band.
Marsalis was 17 when he became the youngest musician ever admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center. In 1979, he began studies at the Juilliard School of Music in New York on full scholarship. His playing came to the attention of drummer, bandleader, and astute spotter of new talent Art Blakey, who invited him to tour with his Jazz Messengers that summer. Marsalis quickly garnered national attention, and in 1981, he decided to leave school to continue his jazz education as a working musician. Back in the Blakey fold, he toured Europe and the United States later that year before joining the Herbie Hancock quartet with Ron Carter and Tony Williams for tours of Japan and the US, including a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. Hancock later told Steve Bloom in Rolling Stone that “I knew he was only 19, just on the scene - it's a lot to put on somebody. But then I realized if we don't hand down some of this stuff that happened with Miles [Davis], it'll just die when we die.”
All this publicity garnered an unprecedented contract with Columbia Records that had Marsalis recording both jazz and classical music for the company. His first album as a leader featured his brother Branford on saxophones and Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums. He formed his first working band in 1982 with Branford, Watts, pianist Kenny Kirkland, and Phil Bowler or Ray Drummond alternating on bass. Think Of One (1983 - Columbia) was the band’s debut. Critically-acclaimed, it also sold phenomenally well, which was particularly noteworthy given the general decline of interest in jazz during the Seventies. The album provided Marsalis with his first Grammy. He also won a Grammy that year in the classical category, the first time that had happened in the history of the awards. He repeated the feat in 1984, and he’s gone on to win a total of nine Grammy awards.
The quintet lasted until late in 1985. Marsalis subsequently organized a quartet with Watts, pianist Marcus Roberts, and bassist Robert Hurst. The group’s first recording was J Mood (1986 - Columbia), followed by Marsalis Standard Time, Vol. 1 (1986 - Columbia) and the double-album Live At Blues Alley (1986 - Columbia). Over the years, the band grew to become a septet, with the addition of Wycliffe Gordon on trombone, Wes Anderson on alto sax, and Todd Williams on tenor. There was also turnover in the rhythm section, with Reginald Veal on bass, Herlin Riley on drums, and early in the Nineties, Eric Reed on piano. Standard Time, Volume 2: Intimacy Calling (1990 - Columbia), three volumes of Soul Gestures In Southern Blue, the seven-CD set Live At The Vanguard (1994 - Columbia), Marsalis Plays Monk: Standard Time Volume 4 (1994 - Columbia), and The Marciac Suite (1999 - Columbia) are just a few of Marsalis’ significant recordings as leader of a small group. Marsalis broke up the band in 1994 to focus on leading the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, but used many of his band members in prominent roles.
Marsalis’ goal to elevate jazz into a well-supported and recognized American art form had led to the founding of New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center program in 1987. Now ensconced in the new Frederick P. Rose Hall, which opened in 2004, the organization offers a year-round schedule of performance and educational events. As the founding Artistic Director, Marsalis has overseen countless programs focusing on the music of famous jazz figures from the past, including residencies, concerts, publications, and competitions. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performs regularly in New York as well as touring across the United States.
Over the years, Marsalis has occasionally recorded with his father Ellis, beginning with one side of Fathers & Sons (1982 - Columbia), which also featured Branford on saxophone. More recently, the entire clan gathered for A Jazz Celebration (2001 - Marsalis Music) in New Orleans.
Marsalis has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the National Medal of Arts, an appointment as a UN Messenger of Peace in 2001, and the French Legion of Honor in 2009. His 1995 video series, “Marsalis on Music,” won a Peabody Award. His commissions have included works for the New York City Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, the New York Philharmonic, and the Berlin Philharmonic. His numerous large-scale projects represent a wide range of interests and collaborators, including his production of the Olympic Jazz Summit at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, a 1998 adaptation of “The Soldier’s Tale,” titled Marsalis/Stravinsky, in association with the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center, and the 2004 soundtrack for the Ken Burns documentary, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Marsalis is well-known for the generous amount of time he spends in classrooms when he’s touring. Time magazine named him one of America's 25 Most Influential People in 1996.
Marsalis’ career has not been without controversy. As artistic director and main inspiration for Ken Burns’ PBS documentary Jazz (2001), Marsalis was accused of promoting his own classicist view of jazz history, which largely ignores fusion and avant-garde music. There was also criticism of his high-profile on-screen role, which struck some as self-aggrandizing. His high pay as Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center generated public outcry in 2006. His playing has also drawn criticism over the years, sometimes from other musicians.
For better or for worse, Wynton Marsalis has been one of the most influential figures in jazz since he burst onto the scene with Art Blakey in 1980. He was at the forefront of the “Young Lions” movement when that signaled a renewed interest in acoustic jazz, and he’s parlayed that early acclaim into an extremely successful and visible career. In the same way that one of his idols, Duke Ellington, was said to truly have the orchestra as his instrument, perhaps Wynton Marsalis will one day be thought of as the jazz figure whose main creation was the jazz repertory institution. Time will tell.
