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| Wynton
Marsalis |
Wynton was born in New Orleans,
Louisiana on October 18, 1961 to Ellis and Dolores Marsalis.
He was the second of six sons, one of whom is autistic. At
an early age Wynton exhibited seriousness about study, an
aptitude for music and a desire to contribute to American
culture. At age 8 he performed traditional N ew
Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by
legendary banjoist, Danny Barker. At 14 he was invited to
perform with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high
school Wynton was a member of the New Orleans Symphony Brass
Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans
Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony and on weekends he
performed in a jazz band as well as in the popular local
funk band, the Creators. At age 17 Wynton became the
youngest musician ever to be admitted to Tanglewood’s
Berkshire Music Center. Despite his youth, he was awarded
the school’s prestigious Harvey Shapiro Award for
outstanding brass student. When Wynton moved to New York
City to attend Juilliard in 1978 and began to pick up gigs
around town, the grapevine began to buzz. Two years later
(in 1980 ) he was rewarded with the opportunity to join the
Jazz Messengers to study under master drummer and
bandleader, Art Blakey. It was in Art Blakey’s band that
Wynton learned the relationship between jazz and democracy.
Art Blakey would always say, “No America, no jazz!” It was
from Blakey that Wynton acquired his concept for bandleading
and for bringing intensity to each and every performance. In
the years to follow Wynton was invited to perform with Sarah
Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Sonny
Rollins, and countless other jazz legends.
With this foundation Wynton assembled his own band and hit
the road, performing over 120 concerts every year for ten
consecutive years. His objective was to learn how to play
and to comprehend how best to give to his audience. During
these years Wynton’s strong belief in jazz and his vision
for the music revitalized the art form. Through an
exhaustive series of performances, lectures and music
workshops Marsalis rekindled widespread interest in an art
form that had been largely abandoned and redefined out of
its artistic substance. Marsalis invested his creative
energy in the art of jazz and would not be compromised by
financial opportunity or critical pressure. Additionally, he
garnered recognition for the older generation of jazz
musicians and prompted the re-issuance of jazz catalog by
record companies worldwide. A quick glance at the better
known jazz musicians today reveals many students of
Marsalis’ workshops: James Carter, Christian McBride, Roy
Hargrove, Harry Connick Jr., Nicholas Payton, Eric Reed and
Eric Lewis to name a few.
Not content to focus solely on his musicianship, Wynton
devoted equal time to developing his compositional skills.
The dance community quickly embraced his penmanship and he
received commissions to create major compositions for Garth
Fagan Dance, Peter Martins at the New York City Ballet,
Twyla Tharp for the American Ballet Theatre, and for the
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Marsalis collaborated
with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in 1995 to
compose the string quartet, At the Octoroon Balls, and again
in 1998 to create a response to Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s
Tale with his composition, A Fiddler’s Tale. At the dawn of
the new millennium Wynton presented his most ambitious work
to date, All Rise, an epic composition for big band, gospel
choir, and symphony orchestra which was performed by the New
York Philharmonic under the baton of Kurt Masur along with
the Morgan State University Choir and the Lincoln Center
Jazz Orchestra (December 1999).
Wynton’s love of the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and
others drove him to pursue a career in classical music as
well. He recorded the Haydn, Hummel and Leopold Mozart
trumpet concertos at the age of twenty. His debut recording
received glorious reviews and won the Grammy Award for “Best
Classical Soloist with an Orchestra.” Marsalis went on to
record ten additional classical records, all to critical
acclaim. Wynton performed with leading orchestras including
the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston
Pops, Cleveland Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, English
Chamber Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and London’s
Royal Philharmonic, working with an eminent group of
conductors including: Leppard, Dutoit, Maazel, Slatkin,
Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Tilson-Thomas. Through his
recordings, workshops and performances Wynton inspired many
youngsters to pursue classical music as well. Famed
classical trumpeter Maurice André praised Wynton as
“potentially the greatest trumpeter of all time.”
In 1987 Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln
Center. The first season consisted of three concerts. Under
Wynton’s leadership the program has developed an
international agenda with up to 400 events annually in 15
countries. The programming is rich and diverse and includes
performances, debates, film forums, dances, television and
radio broadcasts, and educational activities. Educational
activities include an annual High School Jazz Band
Competition & Festival that reaches over 2000 bands in 50
states and Canada, a Band Director’s Academy, and a hugely
popular concert series for kids called “Jazz For Young
People.” In December of 1995 the Lincoln Center Board
awarded the Jazz Department’s significant success by voting
it a full constituent, equal in stature with the New York
Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City
Ballet - a historic moment for Jazz as an art form and for
Lincoln Center as a cultural institution. In February 1998
New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani announced that Jazz at
Lincoln Center was selected to be part of the redevelopment
of the New York Coliseum site at Columbus Circle. Frederick
P. Rose Hall, the new 100,000 square foot complex, will
become Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new home, and will contain
state-of-the-art performance, recording, broadcast,
rehearsal and educational facilities as well as the world’s
first large venue built specifically for jazz. The new Jazz
at Lincoln Center campus will open in the fall of 2004 and
will cost approximately $130 million dollars.
In the fall of 1995 Wynton launched two major broadcast
events. In October PBS premiered a series of educational
television shows on jazz and classical music. The series was
written and hosted by Marsalis and was enjoyed by millions
of parents and children. Writers distinguished Marsalis’
television series by comparing his work to that of the late
Leonard Bernstein in his celebrated Young People’s Concerts
of the 50s & 60s. That same month National Public Radio
began broadcasting the first of Marsalis’ 26-week series
entitled Making the Music. These entertaining and insightful
radio shows were the first full exposition of jazz music in
American broadcast history. Wynton’s radio and television
series were awarded the most prestigious distinction in
broadcast journalism, the George Foster Peabody Award. While
this body of work is enough to fill two lifetimes, Wynton
Marsalis continues to work as hard as ever to earn the
privilege to contribute even more to our world’s cultural
landscape.
Wynton Marsalis has won nine of the coveted Grammy Awards,
earned the distinction of being the only artist ever to win
Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical records (an
accomplishment he astonishingly repeated in consecutive
years), and he is the only artist ever to have won Grammy
Awards in five consecutive years. Wynton was awarded the
Grand Prix Du Disque of France, the Louis Armstrong Memorial
Medal, the Netherlands’ Edison Award and the Algur H.
Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts. He received
countless plaques and was given the Key to over 50 cities.
He was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement and
was dubbed an Honorary Dreamer by the “I Have a Dream
Foundation.” Wynton received a citation from the United
States House of Representatives for his outstanding
contributions to the Arts. Time magazine selected Wynton as
one of America’s most promising leaders under age 40 in
1995, and in 1996 Time celebrated Marsalis as one of
America’s 25 Most Influential People. In the spring of 2001
United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan proclaimed
Wynton Marsalis an international ambassador of goodwill by
appointing him a U N Messenger of Peace. If you speak with
Wynton, however, he will tell you that his greatest reward
is the love and support that he receives from people all
over the world from his twenty plus years
of uninterrupted touring.
Honorary degrees have been conferred upon Wynton by
twenty-nine of our nation’s leading academic institutions
including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale University.
Elsewhere, the New York Urban League awarded Wynton with the
Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership,
the American Arts Council presented him with the Arts
Education Award and Britain’s senior conservatoire, the
Royal Academy of Music, granted Mr. Marsalis Honorary
Membership, the Academy’s highest decoration for a
non-British citizen. In France the Ministry of Culture
appointed Wynton the most prestigious decoration awarded by
the French Republic - the rank of Knight in the Order of
Arts and Literature. And in 1997 Wynton Marsalis became the
first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music
for his epic oratorio Blood on the Fields. In the five
decades prior, the Pulitzer Prize jury refused to recognize
jazz musicians and their improvisational music, reserving
this distinction for classical composers. In a personal note
to Wynton, 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.”
The most extraordinary dimension of Wynton Marsalis,
however, is not his accomplishments but his character. It is
the lesser-known but much appreciated part of this man who
finds endless ways to give of himself. It is the person who
waited in a dark and empty parking lot for one full hour
after a concert in Baltimore, waiting for a single student
to return from home with his horn for a trumpet lesson; it
is the citizen who personally funds scholarships for
students attending the Tanglewood Music Center and the
Eastern Music Festival. Wynton Marsalis has selflessly
donated his time and talent to non-profit organizations
throughout the country to help raise money to meet the many
needs within our society. From My Sister’s Place (a shelter
for battered women) to Graham Windham (a shelter for
homeless children), the Children’s Defense Fund, Amnesty
International, the Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, Food
For All Seasons (a food bank for the elderly and
disadvantaged), Very Special Arts (an organization that
provides experiences in dance, drama, literature, and music
for individuals with physical and mental disabilities) to
the Newark Boys Chorus School ( a full-time academic music
school for disadvantaged youths) and many, many more --
Wynton responded enthusiastically to the call for service.
It is Wynton’s commitment to the improvement of life for all
people as well as his outstanding contributions to the Arts
that portray the best of his character and humanity.
Wynton Marsalis has been appropriately described as a level
raiser whose breadth of talent is equated with genius. It
has been said that he is an American musician for whom
greatness is not merely possible but inevitable. To date
Wynton has produced 33 jazz and 11 classical records and has
sold over 7 million records worldwide including 3 Gold
Records. With his collection of standards he reinvigorated
the jazz musician’s relationship to the American popular
song. With The Majesty Of The Blues, Wynton re-introduced
America to the joy in New Orleans Jazz. In Levee Low Moan,
Thick In The South and other blues recordings, Wynton
extended the jazz musician’s interplay with the blues. With
Citi Movement, In This House on This Morning, Blood on the
Fields and All Rise he invented a fresh conception for
extended form compositions. His inventive interplay with
melody, harmony, and rhythm – his lyrical voicing and tonal
coloring assert new possibilities for the jazz ensemble and
extend the vocabulary of jazz. In his epic oratorio Blood on
the Fields, Wynton draws upon the blues, work songs, chants,
call & response, spirituals, New Orleans jazz,
Ellingtonesque orchestral arrangements, Afro-Caribbean
rhythms and he created Greek chorus-style recitations to
move the work along. The New York Times Magazine said the
work “marked the symbolic moment when the full heritage of
the line, Ellington through Mingus, was extended into the
present.” The San Francisco Examiner stated “Marsalis’
orchestral arrangements are magnificent. Duke Ellington’s
shadings and themes come and go but Marsalis’ free use of
dissonance, counter rhythms and polyphonics is way ahead of
Ellington’s mid-century era.”
Wynton Marsalis is taking new steps and in doing so achieves
a sometimes-mystical radiance in his writing and
performance. From his skilled and adventurous composition to
his swinging virtuosity, music will forever be changed, and
our melodious landscape fundamentally enriched.
|
| Wynton Marsalis Honorary Degrees |
| |
1. Brown University (Doctor of Music)
2. Southern University at New Orleans (Doctor of Music)
1990
3. University at Buffalo - State University of New York
(Doctor of Music)
1992
4. Boston University (Doctor of Music)
1993
5. Academy of Southern Arts and Letters (Doctor of
Philosophy in Arts)
1994
6. University of Miami (Doctor of Music)
1995
7. Hunter College (Doctor of Humane Letters)
8. Manhattan School of Music (Doctor of Music)
9. Princeton University (Doctor of Arts)
10. Yale University (Doctor of Music)
1996
11. Brandies University (Doctor of Humane Letters)
12. Columbia University (Doctor of Music)
13. Governors State University (Doctor of Humane Letters)
14. Johns Hopkins University (Peabody Medal)
15. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Doctor of Fine Arts)
16. Royal Academy of Music (Honorary Member)
17. University of Scranton (Doctor of Fine Arts)
1997
18. Amherst College (Doctor of Music)
19. Howard University (Doctor of Music)
20. Long Island University (Doctor of Music)
21. Rutgers University (Doctor of Fine Arts)
1998
22. Bard College (Doctor of Fine Arts)
23. Haverford College (Doctor of Humane Letters)
1999
24. University of Massachusetts Amherst (Doctor of Fine
Arts)
2000
25. Middlebury College (Doctor of Arts)
26. University of Pennsylvania (Doctor of Music)
2001
27. Clark Atlanta University (Doctorate of Humane Letters)
28. Teachers College–Columbia University (Medal for
Distinguished Service)
29. Connecticut College (Doctor of Fine Arts) |
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