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Wynton Marsalis: Interview by Ted Panken
The Reigning Genius of Jazz to his admirers, the Emperor With No Clothes to his debunkers, Wynton Marsalis has attracted public attention and provoked ferociously divergent responses like few musicians in the music’s history. Since his emergence in the early 1980’s as a trumpet virtuoso and composer-bandleader, the result of Marsalis’ choice and treatment of material and his penchant for salty public statements is a public persona akin to a massive lightning rod or magnet that absorbs and repels the roiling opinions and attitudes informing the contemporary Jazz zeitgeist. Keep reading »
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A Conversation with Wynton Marsalis
At 35, Wynton Marsalis already has more accomplishments behind him than most musicians do in a lifetime. Since he first began recording with his own band in 1982, the New Orleans-born trumpeter has put out some 30 albums, won Grammy Awards in both the classical and jazz fields, [and has] performed in countless clubs and concert halls around the world. A passionate teacher as well as a performer, Marsalis has preached his musical message to thousands of young people via master classes, seminars, radio and TV shows. As Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center since 1987, he has helped bring jazz into the cultural mainstream and burnished its respectability as America’s only native art form. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis: Speaking from the Melody
Trumpeter, composer, author, leader, public figure, educator, father–musician…. Wynton Marsalis is a man of many hats, too many to list here. Keep reading »
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Wynton Marsalis, Top Tutor
It’s precisely because trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis is equally comfortable in classical music and jazz—he studied at both the Juilliard and Blakey schools—that he’s so adept hosting “Marsalis on Music,” a four-part music appreciation program aimed at young listeners. It airs on Channel 26 tonight at 8 and the next three Mondays. Keep reading »
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Joys of a Primer On Tempo and Tone
Today’s tax-slashing politicians, all too eager to cut school and other budgets, tend to think of the arts as frills, if not downright tools of subversion. Students in public schools, especially in urban areas, are getting less and less grounding in the arts, and often none at all. Keep reading »
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The Pied Piper of Jazz
The Pied Piper of Jazz : You can call Wynton Marsalis an accomplished musician, a great teacher or a respected bandleader, but his friends just call him Hoghead. Keep reading »
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Got them low-down Lincoln Center blues
THE PROGRAM for “What Is the Blues?,” latest concert in Lincoln Center’s “Jazz for Young People” series, contained a full-page advertisement for the home video version of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. Keep reading »
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Young man with a horn
A couple of months ago I got a phone call from a writer working on an article about Jazz at Lincoln Center. The program, announced in the spring of 1991, has gotten a lot of media attention. It’s undeniable that Lincoln Center’s giving jazz a regular home has “legitimized” it in the eyes of some cultural elites, including foundations and philanthropists, here in the land of its birth-one of the last places the music has won that respect. Keep reading »
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JACK HEALEY talks with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis about the good works of good jazz, America’s classical music
WYNTON MARSALIS IS A PHENOMENON. A great jazz musician steeped in classical training, a young man with not just a horn but a clear and articulated view of the world. Last year he played as part of Amnesty lnternational’s concert in the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile. Keep reading »
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Academy of Achievement: Interview with Wynton Marsalis
Sometimes I’m thinking about music but its not formulated like a tune. It will just be something general that goes on in my mind all the time. Its not organized in the form of melodies, its just the whole type of poetic motion of music. Music has a certain type of ebb and flow, regardless of the tempo. Whenever I see myself in a situation where I meet a new person, I wonder what they would sound like in music. Keep reading »