Wynton Marsalis

About Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis is a world-renowned trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and a leading advocate of American culture. He presently serves as Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School, and President of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961, he is the son of jazz pianist and music educator Ellis Marsalis, Jr. Wynton started practicing trumpet at age 6 and grew up playing in an unusually diverse group of musical ensembles— including everything from New Orleans traditional marching bands, to funk bands, concert bands, symphonic orchestras and small jazz ensembles. Just one year after moving to New York City to attend The Juilliard School at age 17, Marsalis joined the legendary Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers. In 1981, Wynton formed a quintet and began touring all over the country and the world. To date, he has performed 5,026 concerts in 858 distinct cities and 65 countries across the globe. Over the past four decades, Marsalis has rekindled and animated widespread international interest in jazz through performances, educational activities, books, curricula, and relentless advocacy on public platforms. Today, Marsalis continues the renaissance that he sparked in the early 1980s, attracting new generations of young talent to jazz and illuminating the mythic meanings of jazz fundamentals. Marsalis has been called the “Pied Piper” of jazz and the “Doctor of Swing.”