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Wynton Marsalis

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Wynton Marsalis
Marsalis at the Oskar Schindler Performing Arts Center (OSPAC) Seventh Annual Jazz Festival in West Orange, New Jersey
Marsalis at the Oskar Schindler Performing Arts Center (OSPAC) Seventh Annual Jazz Festival in West Orange, New Jersey
Background information
Birth nameWynton Learson Marsalis
Born (1961-10-18) October 18, 1961 (age 63)
New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
GenresJazz, post-bop, jazz poetry, Classical
Occupation(s)Composer, trumpeter, Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Opera
InstrumentTrumpet
Years active1980–present
LabelsColumbia, Sony, Blue Note
Websitewww.wyntonmarsalis.com

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is a trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and a jazz recording of his was the first of its kind to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Marsalis is the son of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, Jr. (pianist), grandson of Ellis Marsalis, Sr., and brother of Branford (saxophonist), Delfeayo (trombonist), Mboya, and Jason (drummer).


Wynton was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, the second of six sons of Dolores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music professor.[1] At an early age, he exhibited an aptitude for music. At age eight, Wynton performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by banjoist Danny Barker, and at 14, he performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high school, Wynton performed with the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony, various jazz bands and with a local funk band, the Creators.

He graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School with a 3.98 GPA.[2] At age 17, Wynton was the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood's Berkshire Music Center, where he won the school's Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Wynton moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979, and picked up gigs around town. During this period, Wynton received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to spend time and study with trumpet innovator Woody Shaw, one of Wynton's major influences at the time. In 1980, Wynton joined the Jazz Messengers led by Art Blakey. In the years that followed, Wynton performed with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and countless other jazz legends.

In 1995, PBS premiered Marsalis On Music, an educational television series on jazz and classical music hosted and written by Marsalis. Also, in 1995, National Public Radio aired the first of Marsalis’ 26-week series, entitled Making the Music. Wynton's radio and television series were awarded the George Foster Peabody Award. Marsalis has also written five books: Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, To a Young Musician: Letters from the Road, Jazz ABZ (an A to Z collection of poems celebrating jazz greats), and his most recent release Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life.[citation needed]

In 1987, Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, Jazz at Lincoln Center was installed as new constituent of Lincoln Center. In October 2004, Marsalis opened Frederick P. Rose Hall, the world's first institution for jazz containing three performance spaces (including the first concert hall designed specifically for jazz) along with recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities. Wynton presently serves as Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.[citation needed] One of his most recent releases was a 2011 collaboration with blues-rock guitarist Eric Clapton, a Jazz at Lincoln Center concert that produced the live album Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues.

In December 2011, Marsalis was named cultural correspondent for the new CBS This Morning.[3]

Awards and recognition

Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards. In 1983 and 1984, he became the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical records, and he is the only artist to win Grammy Awards for five consecutive years (1983–1987).

Honorary degrees Marsalis has received include those conferred by New York University,[4] Columbia, Harvard, Howard, the State University of New York, Princeton and Yale. Marsalis was honored with the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal and the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement and was dubbed an Honorary Dreamer by the I Have a Dream Foundation. The New York Urban League awarded Marsalis with the Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership and the American Arts Council presented him with the Arts Education Award.

Time magazine list of promising Americans under the age 40 selected Maralis in 1995, and in 1996, Time celebrated Marsalis as one of America's 25 most influential people. In November 2005, Marsalis received the National Medal of Arts. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan proclaimed Marsalis an international ambassador of goodwill for the United States by appointing him a UN Messenger of Peace (2001).

In 1997, Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio, Blood On The Fields. In a personal note to Marsalis, Zarin Mehta wrote, "I was not surprised at your winning the Pulitzer Prize for Blood On The Fields. It is a broad, beautifully painted canvas that impresses and inspires. It speaks to us all ... I’m sure that, somewhere in the firmament, Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and legions of others are smiling down on you."[citation needed]

Marsalis won the Netherlands’ Edison Award and the Grand Prix du Disque of France. The Mayor of Vitoria, Spain, awarded Wynton with the city's Gold Medal – its most coveted distinction. In 1996, Britain's senior conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music, made Marsalis an honorary member, the Academy's highest decoration for a non-British citizen. The city of Marciac, France, erected a bronze statue in his honor. The French Ministry of Culture appointed Wynton the rank of Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature, and in the fall of 2009, Marsalis received France's highest distinction, the insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, an honor that was first awarded by Napoleon Bonaparte.

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

Marsalis, with his father and brothers, are group recipients of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award.[5]

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

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

  • 2000 Listen to the Storyteller

Criticisms

Several jazz notables have unfavorable views of Marsalis' musicianship. Jazz critic Scott Yanow viewed Marsalis as talented but criticized his "selective knowledge of jazz history" and his regard for "post-1965 avant-garde playing to be outside of jazz and 1970s fusion to be barren" as the unfortunate result of the "somewhat eccentric beliefs of Stanley Crouch.[6] Trumpeter Lester Bowie said of Marsalis, "If you retread what's gone before, even if it sounds like jazz, it could be anathema to the spirit of jazz."[7] 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.[8] 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."[9] 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."[10] 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!"[11] In his autobiography, Miles Davis – who Marsalis said had left jazz and "went into rock"[12] – hedged his praise of Marsalis by 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 an uninvited Marsalis from the stage. Davis said "Wynton can't play the kind of shit we were playing", and twice told Marsalis "Get the fuck off."[13]

Some critical exchanges have included insults. Besides insinuating that Davis had pandered to audiences, Marsalis said Davis dressed like a "buffoon." Trumpeter 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."[7][12] Marsalis in reply said Bowie was "another guy who never really could play."[12]

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."[14]

Discography

Main article: Wynton Marsalis discography

References

  1. ^ Stated on Finding Your Roots, PBS, March 25, 2012
  2. ^ Gale Encyclopedia of Biography, http://www.answers.com/topic/wynton-marsalis
  3. ^ . 15 December 2011 http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500499_162-57343829/wynton-marsalis/. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  4. ^ http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2007/05/10/new_york_university_holds.html
  5. ^ 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. 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.
  6. ^ Yanow, Scott. "Wynton Marsalis Biography". allmusic. Retrieved 2007-05-20.
  7. ^ a b Jaggi, Maya (25 January 2003). "Blowing up a storm". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2007-05-20.
  8. ^ Nisenson, Eric (1997). Blue: The Murder of Jazz. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-16785-7.
  9. ^ Excerpts from an article by Andrew Solomon in the New York Times Magazine, Feb. 9, 1997
  10. ^ St. Clair, Jeffrey (28 February 2001). "Now, That's Not Jazz". Gerry Hemingway. Retrieved 2007-02-02.
  11. ^ Byrnes, Sholto. "Stanley Clarke: The Bass Line Heard Around The World". Jazz Forum: the magazine of the International Jazz Federation, Poland. Retrieved 2010-05-07. [dead link‍]
  12. ^ a b c Byrnes, Sholto (2003-01-12). "Wynton Marsalis: Miles Davis? He was a rock star". London: Independent News and Media Limited. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
  13. ^ Davis, Miles and Quincy Troupe. Miles: The Autobiography. Simon & Schuster. 1990. ISBN 0-671-72582-3
  14. ^ David R. Adler. "Ken Burns' "Jazz": The Episode Ten Fiasco". AllAboutJazz.com. Retrieved 2008-01-17.
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