This performance is part of Wynton Marsalis’ final season as Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

With the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and guest artists spanning genres and generations, Jazz at Lincoln Center produces thousands of performances, education, and broadcast events each season in its home in New York City (Frederick P. Rose Hall, “The House of Swing”) and around the world, for people of all ages. Jazz at Lincoln Center is led by Chairman Clarence Otis, Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis, and Executive Director Greg Scholl. Please visit us at jazz.org. 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, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has performed with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic; Cleveland Orchestra; Philadelphia Orchestra; Czech Philharmonic; Berlin Philharmonic; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; London Symphony Orchestra; Sydney Symphony Orchestra; Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; Los Angeles Philharmonic and many others.  Marsalis’ three major works for full symphony orchestra and jazz orchestra, All Rise - Symphony No. 1 (1999), Swing Symphony – Symphony No. 3 (2010), and The Jungle – Symphony No. 4 (2016), continue to be the focal point of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s symphonic collaborations.  The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has also been featured in several education and performance residencies in the last few years, including those in Melbourne, Australia; Sydney, Australia; Chautauqua, New York; Prague, Czech Republic; Vienna, Austria; London, England; São Paulo, Brazil; and many others. Education is a major part of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission; its educational activities are coordinated with concert and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tour programming. These programs, many of which feature Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra 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. Jazz at Lincoln Center, NPR Music and WBGO have partnered to create the next generation of jazz programming in public radio: Jazz Night in America. The series showcases today’s vital jazz scene while also underscoring the genre’s storied history. Hosted by bassist Christian McBride, the program features hand-picked performances from across the country, woven with the colorful stories of the artists behind them. Jazz Night in America and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s radio archive can be found at jazz.org/radio. In 2015, Jazz at Lincoln Center launched Blue Engine Records (www. jazz.org/blueengine), a new platform to make its vast archive of recorded concerts available to jazz audiences everywhere. The label is dedicated to releasing new studio and live recordings as well as archival recordings from past Jazz at Lincoln Center performances, and its first record— Live in Cuba, recorded on a historic 2010 trip to Havana by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis—was released in October 2015. Big Band Holidays was released in December 2015, The Abyssinian Mass came out in March 2016, The Music of John Lewis was released in March 2017, and the JLCO’s Handful of Keys came out in September 2017. Blue Engine’s United We Swing: Best of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Galas features the Wynton Marsalis Septet and an array of special guests, with all proceeds going toward Jazz at Lincoln Center’s education initiatives. Blue Engine’s most recent album releases include 2020’s A Swingin’ Sesame Street Celebration and 2021’s The Democracy Suite featuring the JLCO Septet with Wynton Marsalis. For more information on Jazz at Lincoln Center, please visit www.jazz.org.

WYNTON MARSALIS

Wynton Marsalis (Music Director, Trumpet) is the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC). Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961, he is the son of renowned jazz pianist and music educator, Ellis Marsalis, Jr. Marsalis was gifted his first trumpet at age six by Al Hirt; soon thereafter, he began playing in New Orleans’ famed Fairview Baptist Church Band led by banjoist Danny Barker. However, it wasn’t until he turned twelve that Marsalis began to formally train on the trumpet and perform in bands throughout the city, from the New Orleans Philharmonic and New Orleans Youth Orchestra to funk bands, concert bands, and small jazz ensembles. As a teenager, his passion for music rapidly escalated.

In 1979, at the age of seventeen, Marsalis moved to New York City to study classical trumpet at The Juilliard School. Yet he quickly entrenched himself in New York’s effervescent jazz scene, launching his career with the legendary Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers. At just nineteen, Marsalis hit the road with his own band—he has been touring the world ever since. From 1981 to the time of this writing, he has performed 5,328 concerts in 856 distinct cities and 66 countries around the world.

Marsalis made his recording debut in 1982 and has since recorded over 110 jazz and classical albums, four alternative records, and released five DVDs. Marsalis is the winner of nine GRAMMY Awards, and his jazz oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He remains the only musician to win a GRAMMY Award in two categories—jazz and classical— during the same year (1983, 1984).

Marsalis has solidified himself as an internationally acclaimed musician, composer, bandleader, and advocate of American culture. As a composer, his body of work includes over 600 original songs, 11 dance scores, 13 suites, 4 symphonies, 2 chamber pieces, 2 string quartets, a jazz oratorio, a fanfare, and concertos for violin, tuba, trumpet, and most recently, for orchestra. Included in this rich body of compositions is a multitude of works written specifically to feature the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO): The Democracy! Suite (2021); The Ever Fonky Lowdown (2020); The Jungle- Symphony No. 4 (2016); Swing Symphony- Symphony No. 3 (2010); The Abyssinian Mass (2008); Congo Square (2006); Suite for Human Nature (2004); All Rise- Symphony No. 1 (1999). To date, Marsalis has released 29 full-length albums and nine singles with the JLCO on Jazz at Lincoln Center’s in-house label, Blue Engine Records.

Marsalis is also a globally respected teacher and spokesperson for music education. He led the effort to construct Jazz at Lincoln Center’s home–Frederick P. Rose Hall–the first education, performance, and broadcast facility devoted specifically to jazz. At JALC, Marsalis spearheads educational programs for students of all ages, including Jazz for Young People™ concerts and the annual Essentially Ellington jazz band competition, which celebrated its 30^th anniversary in 2025. Marsalis is the Founding Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School, and President of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation.

Marsalis has produced several educational series for public broadcast. He was the writer and host of the video series Marsalis on Music, the radio series Making the Music, and the weekly conversation series Skain’s Domain. He has written and co-written 10 books, including two children’s books: Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! and Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits. Between 2011 and 2014, he delivered six groundbreaking lectures at Harvard University entitled Hidden in Plain View: Meanings in American Music. And in 2023, he delivered the highly esteemed Nexus Lecture in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Marsalis was appointed Messenger of Peace by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2001 and awarded The National Medal of Arts (2005), The National Medal of Humanities (2016), and the Praemium Imperiale for Music from the Japan Art Association (2023)—Japan’s highest honor for the arts. In December 2021, Marsalis and JALC were awarded the Key to New York City by Mayor Bill de Blasio. Marsalis has received honorary doctorates from 44 top universities around the world, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and Tulane University in his hometown of New Orleans.

Wynton Marsalis’ core beliefs and foundation for living are based on the principles of jazz. He promotes individual creativity (improvisation), collective cooperation (swing), gratitude and good manners (sophistication), and facing adversity with persistent optimism (the blues).