Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis (Music Director, Trumpet) is the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961 to a musical family, Mr. Marsalis was gifted his first trumpet at age 6 by Al Hirt. By 8, he began playing in the famed Fairview Baptist Church Band led by Danny Barker. Yet it was not until he turned 12 that Marsalis began his formal training on the trumpet. Subsequently, Wynton began performing in bands all over the city, from the New Orleans Philharmonic and New Orleans Youth Orchestra to a funk band called the Creators. His passion for music rapidly escalated. As a young teenager fresh out of high school, Wynton moved to New York City in 1979 to attend The Juilliard School to study classical music. Once there, however, he found that jazz was calling him. His career quickly launched when he traded Juilliard for Art Blakey’s band, The Jazz Messengers. By 19, Wynton hit the road with his own band and has been touring the world ever since. From 1981 to date, Wynton has performed 4,777 concerts in 849 distinct cities and 64 countries around the world. Mr. Marsalis made his recording debut as a leader in 1982 and has since recorded 110 jazz and classical albums, four alternative records, and released five DVDs. In total, he has recorded 1,539 songs at the time of this writing. Marsalis is the winner of 9 GRAMMY Awards, and his oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He’s the only musician to win a GRAMMY Award in two categories, jazz and classical, during the same year (1983, 1984).

Mr. Marsalis has solidified himself as an internationally acclaimed musician, composer and bandleader, educator and advocate of American culture. As a composer, his body of work includes over 600 original songs, 11 ballets, four symphonies, eight suites, two chamber pieces, one string quartet, two masses, one violin concerto, and in 2021, a tuba concerto. Included in this rich body of compositions is Sweet Release; Jazz: Six Syncopated Movements; Jump Start and Jazz; Citi Movement/Griot New York; At the Octoroon Balls; In This House, On This Morning; and Big Train. As part of his work at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton 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. All Rise was performed with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra as part of the remembrance of the centennial anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre in June 2021. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wynton and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra have released 7 full-length albums and 4 singles on Blue Engine Records.

Mr. Marsalis is also a globally respected teacher and spokesman for music education. For Jazz, Wynton 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, Wynton is also the Founding Director of Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School. Mr. 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 written and co-written nine books, including two children’s books, Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! and Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits, both illustrated by Paul Rogers. Wynton has received such accolades as having been appointed Messenger of Peace by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (2001), The National Medal of Arts (2005), 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 University in 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 faces adversity with persistent optimism (the blues).

Born in 1963, Naseer Shamma is a renowned Iraqi musician and composer. He graduated from the Institute of Musical Studies in Baghdad in 1987 and went on to gain a PhD in Musical Philosophy. Shamma has won more than 60 awards, including the award for the Best Artist in Iraq, the British Royal Academy Award and the Rotterdam Arab Festival Award. During his career, Shamma has focused on promoting the teachings of the Oud instrument and, as result, established the Arab Oud House in Cairo, Alexandria, Abu Dhabi, Baghdad and Khartoum. These institutions have gone on to attract students from all over the world. He has produced many memorable performances, including those with the Metropolitan Orchestra in Montreal, with jazz legend Wynton Marsalis, and with the Lebanese National Orchestra of Oriental-Arab Music. In 2000, he founded the 2350BC Orchestra with some of the most prominent graduates of the Oud House and renowned guest musicians to perform shows all over the world. He is also the founder of Eastern Orchestra, which includes 75 musicians from the far-east MENA and European regions as well as the "Global Ensemble,” a group of leading Western musicians, united for peace and justice and recently re-branded as the "Peace Builders.” Shamma has widely contributed to the globalization of the oud instrument, and has been named “The Oud Master.” He has famously performed on his instrument using only one hand and rallying that all humans can contribute to art and culture. He has tirelessly fought for human rights and advocated for humanitarian plights. In addition to the preservation of human heritage, he currently serves as ambassador to “The Non-Violence Project,” The International Federation of Red Crescent/Cross Societies and UNESCO.

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.