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A family of music phenoms
It would require a long journey back into musical history to find a sibling team as precociously talented as the Marsalis Brothers. A couple of years ago they were just a pair of teen-agers unknown outside their New Orleans home, presently they have the hottest and most widely publicized new combo in jazz, a CBS Records contract, and a schedule that takes in festivals around the United States and Europe. Keep reading »
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Jazz Families Bridge The Generation Gap
During the early decades of jazz it wasn’t at all unusual to find fathers and sons playing together in the same bands and indulging in familial give-and-take - mature musicianship and on-the-job know-how versus youthful innovation and first-time exuberance. In the black neighborhoods of New Orleans and the other cities where jazz flourished early, only the holier-than-thou looked down on music as a profession. It was an honorable route out of the black ghetto, in many cases the only route. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis’ Top Brass
Virtuosity is rare in both the jazz and classical worlds, and trumpet player Wynton Marsalis is determined to be the best in both of them. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis happened to have an ideal role model in his father, the pianist Ellis Marsalis
How Wynton Marsalis, keeps his head screwed on straight is beyond me. Such lavish and sustained praise has been aimed at this fine young trumpeter from New Orleans over the last few months that I cannot conceive of any 20-year-old, even one as obviously whole and motivated and self-disciplined as Marsalis, not being affected in a darkly deleterious way. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis: At 20, a master of jazz style
It’s seldom that any jazz musician - let alone such a very young, not yet widely known player as trumpeter Wynton Marsalis - gets a page to himself in People magazine. But early this year that’s where Marsalis was, under the banner “Personalities to Watch.” Keep reading »
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Profile: Wynton Marsalis (Downbeat 1982)
When Wynton Marsalis was six years old, his father, Ellis Marsalis, was playing in Al Hirt’s band. At that time, Hirt gave young Wynton a horn. Fourteen years later, Wynton has completed one jazz album, plans to record a classical album, is a full scholarship student at Juilliard, and the winner of the 1981 down beat Critics Poll for talent deserving wider recognition in the trumpet category. Never let it be said that Al Hirt doesn’t know potential when he sees it. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis: interview
CADENCE: Aside from the fact that Art Blakey recommends you very highly, I know nothing about you or your background so perhaps you could fill that in. WYNTON MARSALIS: I’m from New Orleans, born October 18, 1961. I got my first trumpet I when I was 6, from Al Hirt. My father had played piano in Al Hirt’s band; great musician my father Ellis Marsalis. Keep reading »