Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis is the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Born in New Orleans in 1961 to a musical family, Marsalis was gifted his first trumpet at age six and soon began playing in the famed Fairview Baptist Church Band. At 12, he began his formal training and performed with groups all over the city, including the New Orleans Philharmonic and New Orleans Youth Orchestra. As a teenager, Marsalis moved to New York City and joined Art Blakey’s band, The Jazz Messengers. By 19, he hit the road with his own band and has been touring the world ever since.  

Marsalis made his recording debut as a leader in 1982 and has since recorded 110 jazz and classical albums, four alternative records, and five DVDs. Marsalis is the winner of nine Grammy Awards, and his oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.  

As a composer, his work includes over 600 original songs, 11 ballets, four symphonies, eight suites, two chamber pieces, one string quartet, two masses, one violin concerto, and a tuba concerto.  As part of his work at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Marsalis has produced and performed countless new collaborative compositions, including the ballet Them Twos, for a 1999 collaboration with the New York City Ballet. That same year, he premiered the monumental work All Rise, commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic along with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Morgan State University Choir.  

Marsalis is a globally respected teacher and spokesman for music education. He led the effort to construct Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new home — Frederick P. Rose Hall — the first education, performance, and broadcast facility devoted to jazz, which opened in October 2004. He conducts educational programs for students of all ages and hosts the popular Jazz for Young People™ concerts produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center. In addition to his work at JALC, he is also the Founding Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School.  

Marsalis has written and is the host of the video series Marsalis on Music, the radio series Making the Music, and a weekly conversation series titled Skain’s Domain. He has been appointed Messenger of Peace by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (2001), and he received the National Medal of Arts (2005) and the National Medal of Humanities (2016). In December 2021, Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center were awarded the Key to New York City by Mayor Bill de Blasio.  

Marsalis has received honorary doctorates from 39 universities and colleges throughout the U.S, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Tulane.  

To learn more about Wynton Marsalis, please visit his website. 

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO), comprising 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players today, has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center resident orchestra since 1988 and spends over a third of the year on tour across the world. Featured in all aspects of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s programming, this remarkably versatile orchestra performs and leads educational events in New York, across the U.S., and around the globe, in concert halls, dance venues, jazz clubs, public parks, and with symphony orchestras, ballet troupes, local students, and an ever-expanding roster of guest artists.  

Under Music Director Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performs a vast repertoire, from rare historic compositions to Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works, including compositions and arrangements by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, and current and former Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members: Wynton Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, Ted Nash, Victor Goines, Sherman Irby, Chris Crenshaw, and Carlos Henriquez. 

Throughout the last decade, JLCO has performed with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and many others. JLCO has also been featured in several education and performance residencies in the last few years around the world. 

Education is a major part of JLCO’s mission; its educational activities are coordinated with concert and JLCO tour programming. These programs, many of which feature JLCO members, include the celebrated Jazz for Young People™ family concert series; the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival; the Jazz for Young People™ Curriculum; Let Freedom Swing, educational residencies; workshops; and concerts for students and adults worldwide.  

Jazz at Lincoln Center educational programs reach over 110,000 students, teachers, and general audience members.  

For more information on Jazz at Lincoln Center and JLCO, please visit the Jazz at Lincoln Center website.