Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States.
Background
Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, the second of six sons of Delores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr. , a pianist and music professor. Marsalis's brothers are: Branford Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis III, Delfeayo Marsalis, Mboya Kinyatta Marsalis, and Jason Marsalis. Branford, Delfeayo, Jason and father Ellis are also jazz musicians. Ellis III is a poet, photographer, and network engineer based in Baltimore.
Education
Marsalis graduated in 1979 from both Benjamin Franklin High School with a 3. 98 GPA and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.
Career
By his mid-teens he was a featured guest soloist with the New Orleans Philharmonic, playing Haydn and Bach. In high school, while studying music theory, he performed in local marching bands, with the New Orleans Brass Quintet, and in funk bands with his brother Branford. At 17 he was named the outstanding brass player at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, Massachusetts.
Offered a full scholarship by the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, he moved to New York City in 1979, but he soon found the atmosphere at Juilliard oppressive. During the next two years he toured with jazz greats like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Herbie Hancock's acoustic jazz group V. S. O. P. , and recorded as a sideman or soloist with numerous top-name performers.
By 1981 he had signed a jazz and classical recording contract with Columbia. Wynton Marsalis (1982), spotlighting Branford on sax and several sidemen who had been associated with Miles Davis, won the Down Beat magazine survey as the year's best jazz album, and, at the age of 21, Wynton outpolled Davis and Dizzy Gillespie as best trumpet player. Two Columbia releases in 1983--one jazz (Think of One), the other classical (a trio of trumpet concertos, by Haydn, Hummel, and Leopold Mozart)--both won Grammy awards.
Marsalis repeated the feat in 1984 with two more Grammy winners: Hot House Flowers, a jazz album with orchestral accompaniment, and a collection of classical pieces for which he was joined by soprano Edita Gruberova and the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Raymond Leppard. He cofounded the Jazz at Lincoln Center program in 1987 and continued to serve as its artistic director in the mid-1990's.
In the 1990's Marsalis turned increasingly to composition and music education. His major works include In This House, on This Morning (1993) and Blood on the Fields (1994), in addition to music for ballets by Peter Martins, Twyla Tharp, and Garth Fagan. He organized the annual Jazz for Young People series at Lincoln Center, hosted Marsalis on Music (1995) for the Public Broadcasting Service, and presented the 26-part Making the Music series on jazz for National Public Radio (1995 - 1996). He was also artistic director of the Olympic Jazz Summit, a series of all-star concerts in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Games.