Wynton Marsalis's Blog

Behind the Scenes: Wynton Marsalis & The Democracy! Suite on BBC World Service

BBC World Services – Wynton Marsalis: The sound of democracy

Check out this exclusive BBC interview by Leo Hornak, who went behind the scenes with Wynton and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as they got ready for the European premiere of The Democracy! Suite last March.

Listen now on BBC

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 38th Season to Unite African, American Traditions

The concerts of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2025–’26 season, adhering to a theme of “Mother Africa,” will delve into the creative spirit that unites African and American musical traditions. Running from July 24, 2025, to June 20, 2026, and featuring 30% more shows than its last run, the organization’s 38th season includes 19 unique weekends of Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts in the 1,233-seat Rose Theater, nine concerts in the 467-seat Appel Room and more than 350 nights of music at Dizzy’s Club, in addition to webcast performances and in-person and virtual education programs.

The 2025–’26 season also features tour dates worldwide by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in collaboration with noted guest artists and appearances by major figures in jazz and related genres.

Dominating Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 38th season are concerts that explore the deep and enduring ties between jazz, the African continent and its diaspora, a leitmotif that the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis previously addressed in such past Marsalis opuses as Blood On The Fields (1996), Congo Square (2007), Ochas (2014) and the fresh big band arrangements comprising JLCO’s The South African Songbook concert (2019). The season highlights new works, commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center, from jazz artists in the organization’s new The Commission Series. The new season also includes celebratory concerts to honor the centennials of three towering figures in jazz — Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson and Celia Cruz — further illuminating the far-reaching legacy of Afro-American and the African diaspora musical expression.

“The earliest and most fundamental human mythology is African,” JALC’s Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis said. “From Venda to Igbo to a host of other belief systems across the continent, there are viable solutions to today’s challenges.”

Several of the performances on the season address the creative sensibilities that enslaved Africans applied in embedding the rhythms, timbres and melodies from their religious-cultural traditions into the DNA of Black American Music — Negro spirituals, the blues and early jazz — in the United States. Another cohort of concerts home in on the Afro-diasporic vernacular and popular musical genres that evolved in the Caribbean, Central American and South American diasporas and permeated jazz expression from early 20th century New Orleans origins through the first quarter of the 21st century. Others focus on the African consciousness of such modern North American jazz masters as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Randy Weston, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus and Horace Silver, and the musical production of African jazz musicians after 1945, when the African nations were established and the United Nations was formed.

“Our ancestors had cogent and powerful thoughts on who we are as individuals as we pass through the natural cycles of life, how we should relate to one another socially, and how to be one with the universal spirit that inhabits all,” Marsalis said. “In their globally influential music and dance concepts, we can perceive how to find harmony and balance with nature, how to perceive and interact with the supernatural, and how to create endless variations on fundamental themes in pursuit of a good time.”

View full details of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2025–’26 season concert schedule

A Father’s Day to Remember: Wynton Marsalis & The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Light Up Philadelphia

This past Father’s Day in Philadelphia, the Kimmel Center’s newly named Marian Anderson Hall was alive with the electrifying spirit of jazz. Presented by Ensemble Arts Philly, the legendary “Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra”, led by the incomparable Wynton Marsalis, delivered a concert that was nothing short of extraordinary—a soulful celebration, a history lesson, and a masterclass all in one.

Wynton Marsalis, globally revered trumpeter, composer, educator, and champion of jazz, brought his signature brilliance to the stage alongside a powerhouse ensemble. From beloved jazz standards to rare historic gems and newly commissioned works, the evening was a dynamic journey through the genre’s deep and diverse legacy.

The orchestra, featuring a stellar lineup including Philadelphia native Joe Block on piano providing some stellar runs on the 88’s, delivered breathtaking arrangements of classics by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Charles Mingus, to name just a few. Their interpretations were bold, elegant, and bursting with soul—showcasing the precision, swing, and expressive power that Marsalis and his orchestra are known for worldwide.

A highlight of the night was Marsalis’s moving tribute to mentorship and youth. Known for his deep commitment to nurturing the next generation, he praised the importance of passing the torch: “Part of the continuum of our music is standing on the shoulders of those before us, while recognizing the brilliance of younger musicians.” He also gave special recognition to Mr. Lovett Hines of the Philadelphia Clef Club, honoring his decades-long dedication to teaching and inspiring young jazz talent in the city.

The setlist was both powerful and poignant. The orchestra’s rendition of John Coltrane’s “Alabama” was hauntingly beautiful, while “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” (featuring warm, witty vocals from trombonist Vincent Gardner) brought the crowd to life. The finale, “Up From Down,” a Gardner original, earned a well-deserved standing ovation.

Marsalis also delighted the audience with personal stories—like performing in Spain at a soulful ice-skating rink arena where he debuted his vibrant “Medearaza Swing.” His humor and heart added another layer of connection between the music and the audience.

For the encore, the orchestra brought the house down with a stunning rendition of the spiritual “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho,” sending the audience home with full hearts and rhythmic feet.

The evening was more than a concert—it was a gift, a celebration of fatherhood, mentorship, and the enduring power of Jazz. Wynton Marsalis continues not only to preserve the genre but to expand it, inspire with it, and pass it on.

Source: ThisisRnB.com

Review | Lively History Lesson in Houses of Assorted Repute

At the post-performance reception for last week’s appearance by Wynton Marsalis and ensemble, providing a thrilling live accompaniment to the modern silent film LOUIS, an embellished and sometimes racy tale of Louis Armstrong’s formative years, the famed trumpeter was addressing the gathering in the Arlington court and paying props to his collaborators. He pointed out the stellar pianist Cecile Licad, whose playing of early 20th-century music by Louis Gottschalk is a key component of the project, and had words of praise for director and collaborator Daniel Pritzker, who first approached Marsalis about the film/performance concept in 2005.

“I liked him right away,” Marsalis effused, “because he could name all the members of Buddy Bolden’s band.” Bolden is the enigmatic legend of early New Orleans jazz, considered a pioneering force in the birth of jazz as we know it, but who never recorded and spent his later years in a psychiatric facility. Pritzker ended up directing the biopic Bolden in 2019, an interesting but flawed film, with a chronologically circular and dizzy structure.

But LOUIS, a kind of “prequel” biopic about the childhood of Armstrong, came first. The unique end result, which premiered in 2010 and had its West Coast premiere at the Arlington Theatre on Saturday (hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures), is a contemporary silent film in which the musical component is very much live, alive and kicking and riffing in real time. Watching the film in streaming mode only goes so far: As experienced at the Arlington, the full effect is exponentially more engaging with Marsalis and his 13-piece big band onstage and in the shiver-some moment.

It makes perfect sense that both Pritzker and Marsalis would rally around the subject, and the seminal era in jazz. Over the course of 40-ish years, Marsalis has expressed his deep love for and preservationist’s advocacy for jazz of the pre-mid-1960s sort, with special reverence for Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Not incidentally, in LOUIS, Marsalis’s powerful and pitch-perfect trumpet work often stole the show and our sensory attentions and affections.

Pritzker’s obsession with silent film is funneled into a project which adheres to tropes and tics of the silent genre/era, using overly copious degrees of melodrama (including an arch villain resembling Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator), slapstick shtick, and iris shots galore.

The film doesn’t shy away from the sordid environment Armstrong grew up around, in the red light “Storyville” district of New Orleans, reputedly the very seedbed of jazz’s birthing process.

From a more contemporary perspective, LOUIS may be the raciest silent film to date, but for a logical contextual reason. Breasts are bared, hedonistic abandon is afoot in the “house,” business transpires upstairs, and a key dance sequence oozes with sensual sex work excess while the band plays on and Marsalis issues muted trumpet shouts.

One intriguing footnote with the film is the all-important visualization of the famed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, in one of his last projects before his 2016 death. His deft and roaming camerawork gives the film an admirable sheen and shimmer. A clever cameo footnote finds Zsigmond in the brief role as a still photographer who is brusquely kicked out of the room by our resident arch villain character Judge Perry.

At some points, we drift away from the filmic dimension and get lost in the music onstage, an amalgam of original material and rearranged music by Armstrong, Ellington, and Jelly Roll Morton, and the dazzling jazz-cum-classical piano interludes of Gottschalk, courtesy of Licad’s limber virtuosity.

In this latest of many Marsalis performances in Santa Barbara (watch for the return of his brilliant Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra next February), the filmic context represented a valiant new twist on the ongoing agenda of shedding light on jazz historical loam. A highlight of the night at the Arlington actually came in the pre-screening performance by the band, and as it stretched out during and after the end credits. It’s always a pleasure to hear Marsalis and his top-notch allies in action, in any setting.

A special shoutout goes to a new member of Marsalis’s Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra clan, potently gifted saxophonist/clarinetist/flutist Alexa Tarantino — who replaces the departing Ted Nash as the first female musician in the ranks, a long-awaited gender-leveling gesture. Tarantino made a powerful impact with her imaginative and spidery alto sax solo at evening’s end. Louis would approve.

By Josef Woodard
Source: Santa Barbara Independent

Wynton Marsalis leads live jazz score for ‘Louis’ in Bay Area

Jazz history will come to life in the Bay Area when the black-and-white silent film “Louis” is paired with a live musical score by famed trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

The 2010 feature by director Dan Pritzker imagines the early life of pioneering trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong, and boasts such acting talent as Anthony Mackie (“Captain America: Brave New World”) and Jackie Earle Haley (2009’s “Watchmen”).

But Marsalis is the main attraction of an upcoming West Coast concert tour of the film, which kicks off this month. It makes a stop at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland on Saturday, May 24, presented by SFJazz. Local fans can also catch it the following night at Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. He and an 11-piece band plan to perform his original music plus a few jazz standards, while classical pianist Cecile Licad has been tapped to play solo works by 19th century American virtuoso Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

“In the 1990s, I took my mom to see ‘City Lights,’ (Charlie) Chaplin’s movie, with the Chicago Symphony playing the score, and it just blew me away,” recalled the filmmaker, who grew up in Chicago and is an heir of the Pritzker family, known for their ownership of Hyatt Hotels. “I had seen silent films and always liked them, but I was not a buff.

“So I decided I was going to do this the right way. I wrote (a) script based on the story of a boy in New Orleans in the early 1900s who wants to play trumpet, and then I started really watching silent films, maybe two or three a day, for years.”

A Marin County resident for more than two decades, Pritzker first made his mark on popular culture as leader of the 1990s alternative rock and soul band Sonia Dada. But it was his deep knowledge of Armstrong and another seminal horn player, Buddy Bolden, that impressed Marsalis. This expertise was key to the director successfully recruiting Marsalis in 2005 over a seafood dinner in New York to score “Louis” and also “Bolden,” a more traditional color feature that was filmed concurrently but not released until 2019.

“It’s the only time I’ve ever met with a person who wasn’t a historian who had that level of understanding,” Marsalis told the Chronicle by phone from his home in New York City, where he serves as managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Soon after that dinner, Marsalis delved into the meticulous process for putting together the “Louis” score.

“All of it is composed — even ‘improvised’ parts,” he said in explaining how the project is uniquely “through-composed,” meaning every note of it is written.

He added that for the live performances, Andy Faber, a frequent collaborator with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, conducts to a click track.

JLCO mainstays like alto saxophonist Alexa Tarantino and bassist Carlos Henriquez, as well as other notables like baritone saxophonist James Carter and drummer Jason Marsalis, the trumpeter’s youngest brother, are among the 11 members of the live ensemble.

Licad anchors the other end of the score. Born in Manila, Philippines, and trained at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, she was introduced to the works of New Orleans native Gottschalk in 2000.

“He was snubbed a lot by East Coast people who didn’t take him seriously at the time, but he was just so incredible,” she said by phone from her Manhattan home.

That admiration comes through in Licad’s performances, according to Pritzker.

“As I was researching Gottschalk, arguably the first American piano virtuoso, I started listening to current players of his music,” he said. “I thought Cecile was the best person playing that material.”

That lasting impression had everything to do with Licad hitting on the right interpretation. “She’s also Chopin-esque, like he was,” Pritzker said, referencing Frédéric Chopin, the Romantic-era composer and pianist. “Other players were playing it more in a Scott Joplin style with no dynamics.”

While she’d never embarked on such a project, her grand-uncle, Francisco Buencamino, was a pianist who wrote scores for Filipino silent films, so she said there was a feeling of familiarity. But when Licad joined the team in the mid-2000s, she was wholly unaware she’d also be collaborating with Marsalis.

As it turned out, Licad and Marsalis weren’t exactly strangers.

“Cecile and I were signed to CBS Masterworks around the same time in the early 1980s, when we were in our late teens, early 20s,” the trumpeter revealed.

“We went to a concert together to hear (conductor) Claudio Abbado, and we ate dinner together with Claudio too,” Licad added. “Wynton was wearing this really shiny suit, and I’d never seen anyone so young and so confident. I was very shy socially — very much the opposite.”

Since then, Marsalis’ projects, from quartets to a big band, have left an indelible mark on generations of musicians and educators. Combined with initiatives like the Lincoln Center’s WeBop program, which introduces children as young as 8 months to the art form, and its comprehensive collegiate curriculum, he has particularly become a defining voice for jazz education and advocacy.

Yet, even with an accomplished career spanning more than 40 years, the Grammy-winning trumpeter is keenly aware of the opportunities that remain.

“There’s more types of gravity than physical,” he reflected. “And you just start to understand what can be done with the amount of time you have.”

This understanding fuels his creative drive. In addition to his early compositional career writing pieces firmly rooted in jazz forms, Marsalis’ output in recent decades has extended to the classical world. His new Concerto for Orchestra is slated to receive its U.S. premiere from the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in September. He’s also currently working on a cello concerto and his Fifth Symphony.

“That’s the fun of being in a field like music, where you don’t time-out,” the 63-year-old said. “If you’re an athlete, at a certain point you can’t play anymore. But in music, you can play.”

by Yoshi Kato
Suurce: San Francisco Chronicle

Silent film and live jazz come together in Santa Barbara for a show about music legend Louis Armstrong

Louis is a modern-day silent film, complete with a sepia tone. It tells the story of a young Louis Armstrong in New Orleans and features a soundtrack performed live by Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz musician Wynton Marsalis.

The trumpeter and composer admits that, as a young teenage musician, like many of his age, he wasn’t a fan of Armstrong.

“I grew up in the civil rights movement,” said Marsalis. “We didn’t like his [style of] talking, singing, and all that. He seemed like he was from the minstrel era. But also, we didn’t listen to his music. We didn’t actually know who he was.”

Marsalis said the Armstrong hit song Jubilee helped change his mind about the legend.

“My father (who was a well-known musician) knew a lot about the history, and taught it,” said Marsalis.

“When I moved to New York (to study music), I was 17. He sent me a tape and said, ‘learn some of these solos.’ That night, I’ll never forget, I started with a song called Jubilee. [It] was so complex I couldn’t play it. It gave me instantly another level of understanding and respect. After that, I got into his music.”

In 2006, Marsalis brought together some of the biggest names in contemporary jazz to record a version of the classic 1920s Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens collection.

“It was more like a modern take using his orchestration concepts, to do it the way we would do it,” Marsalis said. “It would be interesting to listen to what we did in relation to the way they did it.”

Now, the 90-minute silent film Louis, accompanied by a live jazz ensemble, brings Armstrong to life again in a different way.

The movie, directed by Dan Pritzker, is loosely based on Armstrong’s childhood. Pianist Cecile Licad and an 11-piece all-star jazz ensemble accompany Marsalis.

He said one of the special things about the project is that as it tours, it’s always different. It’s live jazz, and they’re always improvising.

“They’re going to hear authentic music from a time period that they haven’t heard,” said Marsalis. “We bring these historical things together. It’s very unusual.”

UC Santa Barbara Arts and Lectures presents Louis Saturday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m. at Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theater.

By Lance Orozco
Source: KCLU Radio

Why Wynton Marsalis will never be over the transcendent genius of Louis Armstrong

Wynton Marsalis is on his way to Chandler Center for the Arts with Cecile Licad and an all-star jazz ensemble to perform the score to “Louis,” a silent film telling a mythical tale of a young Louis Armstrong in the cradle of jazz, New Orleans, on Thursday, May 22.

Marsalis will play a score comprising primarily his own compositions with a 13-member jazz ensemble while Licad will play the music of 19th century American composer L.M. Gottschalk.

Marsalis spoke with The Arizona Republic about his involvement in the movie, which grew out of a conversation with filmmaker Dan Pritzker about American cornetist Buddy Bolden, a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of ragtime music that became what we now know as jazz.

Here’s what he had to say.

How Wynton Marsalis got involved in the silent film ‘Louis’

How did you come to get involved in this “Louis” project?

(Pritzker) was talking about making a film on Buddy Bolden. Well, it was the first time in my life I had ever been approached to do anything about Bolden, and just sitting down with him, he knew all the people in the bands and had a sense of the connection to American history of that time.

So the original talks were about Buddy Bolden, and then the silent film came after that. And that was just a kind of mythic, nonfactual thing that dealt with life in New Orleans around Louis Armstrong’s time with little Pops as a character from a mythological standpoint.

All of these were Dan’s ideas. He had seen a Charlie Chaplin film with the Chicago Symphony backing the film and he thought it would be a good idea to do a contemporary silent film.

What was the appeal of the project to you?

Well, one was to recreate Bolden’s style for me as a trumpet player, because I had always heard that he played less than the people who came after him, you know? And I always thought that was kind of curious, because most of the people, the people who invent styles, always played much better than the ones who followed them.

If you take Charlie Parker, he played his style better than anybody who played it. You take the style Louis Armstrong invented, many trumpet players came out of his style, but his style was the prototype. Generally, the prototypical style is an amalgamation of all the styles that came before it.

If you take what Beethoven combined to follow Haydn, and then, even though he wasn’t trained in that when he was younger, as a much older man, he began to try to write fugues and other things that were much more the provenance of Bach in the earlier era.

I just feel in the arts, that’s just how it always works. The person who brings together the styles influences other people with aspects of their personality, and then eventually another person comes that amalgamates all those styles. So I was really interested in that.

And with the silent film, he was talking about Gottschalk and that kind of New Orleans music — piano music, parlor music. I thought that was a good idea. And once again, I mean, how many times you ever talk to anyone about Gottschalk’s music? In my life, that’s maybe one of two conversations I’ve had. And I’m not a spring chicken, you know what I mean?

And the piano player he wanted to play with was Cecile Licad, and just ironically, she and I were signed to CBS Masterworks at the same time when we were young people. In 1982, ’83, we were 21, 20 years old. So I was very familiar with Cecile, because we had the same product manager, Miss Christine Reed. So I knew all of Cecile’s early records and had heard a lot about Cecile from Christine.

I thought, What’s the chances of this, 20-something years later, to meet somebody talking about Gottschalk, Louis Armstrong, Buddy Bolden’s band and knows Cecile. So you know, yeah, I had to say yes to it.

And when you play in Chandler, you’re providing the score live?

We play the score live, yeah, with a click track (a metronome, used to keep the live performance synced up with the film). A lot of the music is written, but some of it is improvised, too. Andy Farber is the conductor, the same conductor we had originally.

I was wondering how much would be improvised.

Well, you figure, the rhythm section is improvising almost all the time. I would say 50% of it, probably? Fifty-five? But we have a click track, and we have to stay on cue.

Building the score for a silent film about young Louis Armstrong

How did you go about writing the score?

Well, in the case of this score, Dan used different musics, and he put them together the way he wanted to. And whenever he needed some new music, he said, I need music from this time to that time. But he’s a musician, so he has a good sense of it. I like the way he uses the music. He picked some difficult music to play, too.

Was the idea to capture the spirit of Armstrong’s work, or the music that inspired him, or something different altogether?

Well, to say that it’s all a continuum. We represent the continuum. So this is all a part of the table we can set and the menu we can serve. It includes Gottschalk. It’s about Louis Armstrong. It has him, but it also has songs that sound like (Arizona native Charles) Mingus wrote them, or something that nobody at any time has done.

Was the film what you imagined it would be when Dan approached you with the concept?

I didn’t really think about what it would be. We kind of learn playing jazz, if me and you were playing together, I can’t have a picture of what you’re gonna play in my mind, because if I do that, then I’m gonna start judging what you play.

And many times, when you hear a take of something, or you hear a tape back of a piece that you thought sounded a certain way, it doesn’t sound like you thought it sounded. And that’s because your perspective when you’re listening to it is prejudiced by what you expect to hear.

I didn’t have a vision for a silent film, of a contemporary film set in that time. And it had all the kind of fundamentals, mythological things, a lot of American mythology.

Like, the judge has the baby with the mulatto girl, and there’s political corruption in the police and the younger person in that environment trying to make his way, and the kind of moral decisions people have to make, and some make moral decisions and some don’t. And young genius and virtuosity and the upper class and the lower class, all these kind of grand themes that run throughout all of our mythology.

Wynton Marsalis: Louis Armstrong’s ‘genius was transcendent’

Could you talk about how Armstrong has remained such an iconic figure in the history of jazz, in the history of music?

He was just that great. It’s like how Bach has remained. Bach just consolidated the 10-finger way of playing the keyboard. Louis Armstrong taught us how to improvise coherent solos. He was a master of the blues. He could play tangos and things in the Afro-Latin diaspora. Many times, people in those cultures would say, ‘Man, who the hell is that playing our music that well?’

He was an unbelievable singer. He influenced everybody. Even Frank Sinatra said about him, ‘He’s the beginning and the end of it.’ And everybody from Frank to you-name-it, whoever was great, they loved him. Billie Holiday.

People might not have necessarily liked his demeanor because he had an element that came from that minstrel era. But his genius was transcendent.

And if you’re a trumpet player, man, you know…. (laughs) What can you say? Whatever he played on our instrument, it was never played like that before or since. I mean, at this point, you can’t imagine anybody playing with the type of human depth that he played our instrument with, especially when he became an older man.

Some of Louis Armstrong’s playing in the ’60s doesn’t even sound like a trumpet. It’s like a person talking to you.

So his genius has merited that type of attention. And even with all the kind of ‘yuck-yuck’ entertainment stuff that he did, that was required of him to do — and it was something he did willingly — even that has not been able to obscure the actual depth of his genius.

So the contemporary student today, when confronted with Louis Armstrong playing, if they’re a trumpet player, believe me, they say, ‘Damn, what in the world could I do to play like this man plays?’

How New Orleans shaped the musician Louis Armstrong became

Could you talk about the role New Orleans played in shaping the musician Armstrong became?

Well, you got to figure it was French. It was Spanish between 1750-something and 1800. It was at the mouth of the Mississippi, so you had all the riverboat Americana people there. It was the largest Southern port. It was a center of legal prostitution, so all the sailors were down there coming from the Caribbean. You had all that influence.

You had all the stevedores and people working on the levees and their songs. You had the blues coming from Mississippi, and all those people down below sea level in the capital of malaria and diphtheria and typhoid, all the stuff we had that would ruin our population from time to time.

They were hot-blooded people who were always ready to enter into a duel. And the slave population was much freer than it was in other places. Then you had an influx of Haitians after the Haitian Revolution. So it was and unlike any other place in the United States. It was Catholic and it wasn’t Protestant because of the French. And it had Santeria, and all the kind of European traditions were still down there.

So it’s all of these types of things that took place in New Orleans that didn’t take place anywhere else. The Mexican pop exposition brought an influx of Mexican musicians and the style of music that they played. Manuel Perez was a great cornetist who came out of that influx and so on and so forth.

You had the French music and the kind of parlor music that Gottschalk’s music represents. You had the bands used for advertisements. You had white, Black and Creole, a three-strata caste system that was not the way it was in the rest of the United States. I could go on and on.

And all the people at the bottom of society, all the people in the clubs, the sporting houses, people involved in prostitution, gambling, all those people always had an equality you didn’t find anywhere else in the world, right? Because when you’re down there, you’re with everybody else, you know? Jelly Roll Morton actually said that.

Wynton Marsalis: ‘I’m still trying to learn and become better’

What’s been the best part of being involved with this project for you?

It’s all the music I learned and had the opportunity to play, especially if you combine it with Bolden, you know? I got to study styles of people like Freddie Keppard and Manuel Perez and Bunk Johnson and King Oliver, and look at their styles and just learn more about our instrument, more about playing jazz.

That’s an important history that I knew and was familiar with, coming from New Orleans, but to really study it helped my musicianship at that time, I think.

It’s great to hear someone who’s done as much, accomplished as much, as you talk about this as a learning experience. It’s great that you’re still learning.

Hey, man, I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I’m still trying to learn and become better, more knowledgeable.

‘Louis’: A Silent Movie with Live Accompaniment by Wynton Marsalis and Cecile Licad
When: 7 p.m. Thursday, May 22.
Where: Chandler Center for the Arts, 250 N. Arizona Ave.
Admission: $62 and up (fees included).
Details: 480-782-2680, chandlercenter.org

by Ed Masley
Source: The Arizona Republic

Detroit Symphony Orchestra presents Wynton Marsalis’ ‘Blues Symphony’

“All of my pieces are long,” says trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis. “And you got to imagine that’s what made it much worse when it sounded so bad. It was a lot of it. So, it was like, ‘Damn, this is terrible, and there’s a lot of this to go.’”

That’s Marsalis’ honest assessment of what his Blues Symphony sounded like in its early stages. After several revisions, he’s thrilled with the outcome on a new recording featuring Music Director Jader Bignamini and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Find out more on New Classical Tracks with host Julie Amacher.

Listen to the interview: Play

Source: Your Classical – Minnesota Public Radio

Jazz At Lincoln Center Announces 2025-26 Season

Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) and Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis today proudly announce programming for its 2025-26 season of concerts at the home of JALC, Frederick P. Rose Hall, colloquially known as The House of Swing, which houses Rose Theater, the Appel Room, and Dizzy’s Club.

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 38th season, Mother Africa, delves into the creative spirit that unites African and American musical traditions, and runs from July 24, 2025 to June 20, 2026. Featuring 30% more shows than last season, the organization’s 38th season includes: 19 unique weekends of Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts in the 1233-seat Rose Theater, nine concerts in the 467-seat Appel Room, and more than 350 nights of music at Dizzy’s Club, in addition to webcast performances and in-person and virtual education programs. The 2025-26 season also features tour dates worldwide by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, an ensemble of 15 virtuoso instrumentalists, unique soloists, composers, arrangers, and educators whose mandate is to coalesce and animate an unprecedented variety of styles and genres, in collaboration with noted guest artists and appearances by major figures in jazz and its related genres.

Dominating Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 38th season are concerts that explore the deep and enduring ties between jazz, the African continent, and its diaspora, a leitmotif that the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis previously addressed in such past Marsalis opuses as Blood on the Fields (1996), Congo Square (2007), Ochas (2014), and the fresh big band arrangements comprising JLCO’s The South African Songbook concert (2019). The season highlights new works, commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center, from renowned jazz artists in the organization’s new The Commission Series. The new season also includes celebratory concerts to honor the centennials of three towering figures in jazz – Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, and Celia Cruz – further illuminating the far-reaching legacy of Afro-American and the African diaspora musical expression.

“The earliest and most fundamental human mythology is African,” JALC’s Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis says. “From Venda to Igbo to a host of other belief systems across the continent, there are viable solutions to today’s challenges.”

Several of the performances on the season address the creative sensibilities that enslaved Africans applied in embedding the rhythms, timbres, and melodies from their religious-cultural traditions into the DNA of Black American Music – Negro spirituals, the blues, and early jazz – in the drum-averse United States. Another cohort of concerts home in on the Afro-diasporic vernacular and popular musical genres that evolved in the drum-friendly Caribbean, Central American, and South American diasporas and permeated jazz expression from early 20th century New Orleans origins through the first quarter of the 21st century. Others focus on the African consciousness of such modern North American jazz masters as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Randy Weston, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus, and Horace Silver, and the musical production of African jazz musicians after 1945, when the African nations were established and the United Nations was formed.

“Our ancestors had cogent and powerful thoughts on who we are as individuals as we pass through the natural cycles of life, how we should relate to one another socially, and how to be one with the universal spirit that inhabits all,” Marsalis says. “In their globally influential music and dance concepts, we can perceive how to find harmony and balance with nature, how to perceive and interact with the supernatural, and how to create endless variations on fundamental themes in pursuit of a good time.”

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2025-26 season concert schedule is available on jazz.org/25-26.

Reflections on Africa in Rose Theater (July 24-25, 2025), offers a preview of the 2025-2026 season, in which the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, music-directed by Vincent Gardner, presents compositions that reflect the impact of African consciousness on music composed by American jazz masters John Coltrane, Randy Weston, Jackie McLean, René McLean, and Horace Parlan. Opening for the JLCO at this special performance are high school – aged musicians from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Summer Jazz Academy, a two-week residential program for advanced jazz study.

The fall season officially opens in Rose Theater in September with the world premiere of Wynton Marsalis’ Afro! (September 18-20, 2025), a new commission that refracts his lifelong ruminations about the African continent, featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and featuring vocalist Shenel Johns and Ghanaian-New Orleans djembe virtuoso Weedie Braimah. New Orleans-based drummer Herlin Riley joins the orchestra as the centerpiece of its African tour in the fall of 2025.

In October, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis presents Nduduzo Mahkhatini and the Music of Bheki Mseleku (October 24-25, 2025) in Rose Theater, reuniting with the eminent South African pianist-composer. Mahkhatini played an important role in JALC‘s pathbreaking 2019 concert, The South African Songbook, celebrating 25 years of South African democracy with a diverse group of top South African musicians – each of whom selected an essential song from the South African canon, which was then arranged by a member of the JLCO and performed during the orchestra’s first tour of South Africa that year. On this evening, Makhatini and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis present new music along with fresh arrangements of works by Makhatini and Durban-born pianist-saxophonist Bheki Mseleku (1955-2008), whose music Makhatini once analogized to “a sonic pilgrimage from the beautiful and organic landscapes of Durban, to the vibrant energy of London and ultimately toward the inner dimensions of one’s being.”

On October 3-4, 2025 in Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center presents a 91st birthday retrospective of the 75-year-long career of Capetown-born pianist-composer Abdullah Ibrahim, who was known as “Dollar Brand” when Duke Ellington first heard his trio in 1963 and sponsored his first recording. The 2019 NEA Jazz Master’s Ellington and Monk-inspired style will be on display as he performs works from his vast repertoire in solo and trio contexts and with his long-standing four-horn septet Ekaya. Special guests include 2024 NEA Jazz Master Terence Blanchard, Kenny Garrett, and Cecil McBee.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis continues its long-standing relationship with the oeuvre of Duke Ellington with Duke in Africa (January 15-17, 2026), music directed by Chris Lewis and Alexa Tarantino, two of the JLCO‘s newest members, featuring the orchestra performing Ellington’s Liberian Suite (1947), Afro Bossa (1963), and Togo Brava Suite (1971) in Rose Theater.

Rising star pianist-arranger Luther Allison music directs Come Sunday in the Appel Room (January 30-31, 2026), a big band program drawn from Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts of 1965, 1968 and 1973, joined by a top-shelf band and vocalists Joy Brown and Georgia Heers, who sang when Allison first presented the piece at Dizzy’s Club in 2023.

Mother Africa’s impact on Black American sacred music is the focus of the two concerts in the Appel Room that comprise the fifth annual edition of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s popular educational-oriented Journey Through Jazz series. The Mighty Negro Spirituals (November 21-22, 2025), music directed by Marcus Printup, presents a 21st century perspective on the sacred folk songs with religious lyrics that were created and first sung by enslaved Africans, first published in printed form after the U.S. Civil War, in 1867, and popularized internationally by such ensembles as the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The shared DNA that connects Negro spirituals and the blues – work songs, siren calls, call-and-response, hollers – emerges in the arrangements; as do the oceanic emotions, searing beauty and aspirationally encoded messages of deliverance from oppression that animate these extraordinary works.

Drummer Domo Branch music directs the second Journey Through Jazz concert of the 2025-26 season featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on Overtures to Africa in the Appel Room (April 10-11, 2026), tracing the pathways of African consciousness in the music of such signpost figures as Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, and Charles Mingus.

Award-winning bassist Endea Owens and firebrand trumpeter Jeremy Pelt (author of the essential five-volume interview series Griot) debut commissioned works that reflect the footprint of African culture on their respective sensibilities in the Appel Room (March 6-7, 2026). Owens’ Whispers of The Celestial Root: Songs of The Black Earth offers a fresh perspective on Africa’s influence on jazz; and Pelt’s *Masks*, which features his working quintet plus three African percussionists and a vocalist, distills the composer’s intensive studies of the folklore, mysticism, and overall significance of African tribal masks.

JLCO saxophonist, composer, and educator Sherman Irby music directs Birth of the Blues (April 17-18, 2026) with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and special guests tracing the evolution of blues expression with new arrangements of repertoire by W.C. Handy in Rose Theater.

Big Band Afrobeats (March 6-7, 2026) matches the eminent drummer-bandleader Ulysses Owens Jr.‘s big band with Nigerian-born bassist-composer Michael Olatuja in the Appel Room. Olatuja portrayed impressions gleaned as a citizen of Lagos, London, and New York on the exceptional 2020 album Lagos Pepper Soup, his spectacular blend of West African Afrobeats and jazz.

Trinidad-born trumpeter-composer Etienne Charles, whose most recent Jazz at Lincoln Center appearance was the 2023 concert Carnival: The Sound of A People, addresses Anglophone Afro-Caribbean traditions on Folklore LIVE Vol. 2 (June 5-6, 2026) in the Appel Room. The concert revisits and builds upon territory explored on Charles’ exceptional 2009 album Folklore, on which he brought to life the surreal, mythical characters of Afro-Caribbean folklore with original compositions. Charles unveils new musical stories rooted in various elements of the African diaspora – including, but not limited to, low-country Gullah-Geechee rituals, Haitian Vodou, Afro-Mexican Son Jarocho, and Garifuna rhythms – blending big band textures with dancers, masquerade, and spoken word.

Two stirring new commissions get their world premiere debut in The Commissions Series: Danilo Pérez and Godwin Louis On these evenings, pianist-composer-educator Danilo Pérez, a valued friend of Jazz at Lincoln Center since the 1990s, presents a new commissioned work celebrating the African heritage that shapes Panama’s cultural and musical identity titled The Panáfrica Suite: Echos from the Isthmus and saxophonist Godwin Louis’ introduces African Roots, Diasporic Routes: Benin, Kongo, and the Music of the Americas. Joined by renowned singer Catherine Russell and percussionist Weedie Braimah, Pérez, Louis, and the JLCO treat audiences to a transatlantic voyage in Rose Theater (March 12-14, 2026).

African musical pathways in the southern Americas is the subject of *The Commissions Series: Carlos Henriquez and Obed Calvaire* (February 27-28, 2026) in Rose Theater, where the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performs new works by JLCO’s Carlos Henriquez and Obed Calvaire. Performing new compositions from both musicians, building off Henriquez and Calvaire’s respective Puerto Rican and Haitian roots, the orchestra shines a spotlight on the colorful and vibrant sounds of the Afro-Caribbean experience along with guests saxophonist Godwin Louis and Grammy Award-winning pianist Zaccai Curtis.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis continues its long-standing exploration of the deep African roots and branches that bedrock the numerous musical genres of Brazil with *Soul of Brazil* (June 12-13, 2026) in Rose Theater. Mandolin virtuoso Hamilton de Holanda – a frequent JALC collaborator – joins the orchestra on fresh arrangements of his own compositions and those of Moacir Santos, whose pathbreaking fusions of Afro-Brazilian rhythms with the tropes of big band jazz earned him the sobriquet “The Brazilian Duke Ellington.”

São Paulo-born percussion wizard Cyro Baptista, whose long association with Jazz at Lincoln Center includes the 2014 tribute to the music of Moacir Santos with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, celebrates his 75th birthday in Rose Theater with *A Banquet for the Spirits* (November 7-8, 2025), joined by special guests from across Baptista’s genre-bending, globe-trotting career.

Jazz at Lincoln Center honors the centennial of the immortal Cuban “Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz (1925-2003) with a dance party in the Appel Room (October 17-18, 2025), music directed by JLCO’s Carlos Henriquez, who performed and recorded alongside her as a youngster, and a band including a cohort of New York and Miami-based Latin all-stars and singers, including Aymée Nuviola, Alain Pérez and Ariacne Trujillo Duran.

Dianne Reeves; (February 14-5;15, 2026) features the luminous five-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist and NEA Jazz Master in Rose Theater, presenting her annual celebration of love in all its forms. Revealing an approach to melody and phrasing as skilled as it is spontaneous, the supreme vocalist and expert song interpreter shares songs of rapture and anguish, of romance and heartbreak, delivering cherished standards and surprise repertoire.

The 2025-26 edition of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s perennial holiday concert Big Band Holidays music-directed by trombonist Chris Crenshaw, features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with sensational vocalists Shenel Johns and Kate Kortum, bringing new life to classical tunes in Rose Theater (December 16-21, 2025).

A two-night celebration of sui generis guitar shaman Bill Frisell’s 75th birthday in the Appel Room (March 27-28, 2026) with “In My Dreams” featuring Jenny Scheinman, Hank Roberts, Eyvind Kang, Thomas Morgan and Rudy Royston on Friday, and separate duets with alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and vocalist Petra Haden on Saturday.

Oscar Peterson: A Centennial Celebration honors one of the 20th century’s great improvisers, whose musical catalog was influenced by the struggles of post-colonialism in the African continent with a star-studded evening in Rose Theater (May 8-9, 2026).

Jazz at Lincoln Center celebrates Sketches of Miles: Miles at 100 featuring the JLCO and special guests, performing iconic orchestrations Davis created with the endlessly inventive Gil Evans in Rose Theater (May 14-16, 2026).

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame legend Steve Miller returns to Jazz at Lincoln Center to celebrate two late legends: saxophonist Eddie Harris and drummer Chico Hamilton. Miller’s signature blues-rock guitar style will be complemented by an all-star band as well as the Louisiana rhythms of Lil’ Nathan & The Zydeco Big Timers in Rose Theater (November 14-15, 2025).

Multi-award winning vocalist Jazzmeia Horn returns to the Appel Room (May 29-30, 2026) with Her Noble Force big band. Horn will present a program showcasing her own music, as well as works from female composers who’ve inspired her over the course of her career.

The Appel Room, Ertegun Atrium, Dizzy’s Club, and Varis Leichtman Acoustic Studio, all host concerts during Jazz at Lincoln Center’s third annual *Unity Jazz Festival* (January 10-11, 2026), presenting a slate of contemporary bands representing a 360-degree panorama of 21st century jazz and jazz-adjacent approaches.

*Blues Jam* returns to Rose Theater (June 18-20, 2026) for a soul-drenched jam session featuring a star-studded lineup of blues legends and powerhouse vocalists celebrating the enduring power of the blues.

Family Concerts, held live and in-person in Rose Theater, have been a Jazz at Lincoln Center mainstay since the early 1990s. The events this year include *Who is Louis Armstrong?* (March 6-7, 2026), and *Who is Celia Cruz?* (October 17-18, 2026), hosted by Carlos Henriquez and featuring vocalist Ariacne Trujillo Duran.

In sum, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2025-26 season admirably supports Marsalis’ assertion that the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra “might be the most flexible and all-encompassing ensemble in the history of our music,” and embodies the organization’s self-imposed challenge to represent the highest aspirations of jazz expression.

The vast majority of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2025-26 season concerts and many sets from Dizzy’s Club will be broadcast in real time on Jazz at Lincoln Center’s subscription streaming service Jazz Live, which can be accessed via smart TV, mobile device, and desktop platforms. Learn more at jazzlive.com.

Education

Jazz at Lincoln Center serves the largest jazz education program network in the world. Its initiatives build on the organization’s 38-year history of promoting education in jazz performance and appreciation. These programs reach all populations, from infants to seniors, and advance Jazz at Lincoln Center’s belief that jazz education is for all – regardless of experience, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.

The goal of each program is for participants to learn the communal history of jazz in a sociopolitical context, receive guidance on better communication of personal objectives while maintaining balance in a group, and gain awareness of the mission of jazz musicians today – building on the aspirational foundation laid down by earlier generations.

With the lodestar composer, pianist, and orchestra leader Duke Ellington as a foundational guide, Jazz at Lincoln Center continues to produce an extensive range of educational and advocacy programs for all ages, not only on the stages in The House of Swing, but through outreach to thousands of public and private schools across the United States that serve a broad cross-section of American children and teenagers. “Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra have a responsibility to invest in community,” Marsalis says. “The community includes our young people. We have a lot of work to do, in all of our schools, teaching our kids how to listen and identify excellence.”

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s signature education program, the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival (EE), celebrates its 31st anniversary on April 30 – May 2, 2026. The program will continue to spread the message of Duke Ellington’s music, leadership, and collective orientation, providing five free transcriptions of original Duke Ellington recordings – along with four original transcriptions of Melba Liston’s music – to high school ensembles across thousands of schools and community bands in 58 countries. In addition to sheet music, the program also provides rehearsal guides, original recordings, professional instruction, and more, free of charge to member schools. The popular Regional EE Festivals return in 26 locations across the United States, in addition to three in Australia.

Other highlights of the 2025-26 Education season include:

Swing University, an online program that serves a global jazz community with jazz appreciation classes on a wide variety of topics during summer, fall, winter, and spring terms. Classes return online with courses ranging from Celia Cruz to Luis Russell to our popular mainstays – Jazz 101 and Jazz 201.

WeBop, an interactive program for families with children ages 8 months to 7 years old, hosts in-person classes beginning in September 2025. Through a new WeBop Family Jazz Party *Jazz & Africa*, children and their caretakers will explore the rich African connections to jazz. *Let Freedom Swing*, are in-school educational concert programs focused on history, civics, and social justice, held as in-person concerts in schools across New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, London (UK), and at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AK. *The National Collegiate Jazz Championship,* (formerly the *Jack Rudin Jazz Championship)*, an invitational for 10 collegiate jazz bands takes place at Jazz at Lincoln Center (January 18-19, 2026). *Jazz Academy* continues to provide middle and high school students with high-level, low-cost jazz education and resources both in-person and online. Middle school students receive tuition-free instruction in the program’s Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Bronx locations. High school age students continue instruction at Frederick P. Rose Hall. Following the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra‘s (JLCYO) critically acclaimed spring 2025 tour of London, the JLCYO tours Japan and collaborates with Japanese jazz students in March 2026. The two-week intensive Summer Jazz Academy (SJA) takes place at Bard College in Hudson Valley, and at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. In July, SJA students make their Rose Theater debut as the opener for the JLCO. *A Closer Listen*, a free program featuring jazz experts and enthusiasts holding in-depth discussions on jazz works, continues online.

Touring 2025-26 season

Since summer 2021, Jazz at Lincoln Center has collaborated with organizations throughout New York City and environs beyond to present successful summer concert events, many of which are free of charge. From July through September 2025, Jazz at Lincoln Center continues these summer programs with Caramoor, Times Square Alliance, Lincoln Center, and more.

In June 2025, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will perform at the Montreal Jazz Festival, Rochester Jazz Festival, and Ottawa Jazz Festival.

From July 14-27, 2025, the JLCO will be in residence at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Summer Jazz Academy, a residential high school summer institute for advanced study in jazz performance. Bard College will host the Summer Jazz Academy from July 14-20; Rose Theater hosts Summer Jazz Academy, including workshops and performances, from July 21-27, culminating in student recitals at Dizzy’s Club.

In November 2025, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis travels to Lied Center of Kansas to premiere *Wave the Wheat*, a suite featuring commissioned works by each orchestra member.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tours *Big Band Holidays* with singing sensation Shenel Johns, led by Chris Crenshaw, from December 2-14, 2025.

In January and February 2026, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis tours the Midwest, including a stop at the University of Michigan to workshop Wynton Marsalis’s new work, *Symphony No. 5*, ahead of its premier performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Kimmel Center of Performing Arts in Philadelphia on May 28 and May 30-31, 2026; at Carnegie Hall in New York City on May 29, 2026; and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Orchestra Hall at Chicago Symphony Center in Chicago from June 4-6, 2026.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis embarks on a tour of Japan between March 16-22, 2026.

Dizzy’s Club

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s world-renowned Dizzy’s Club, one of the three main performance venues at Frederick P. Rose Hall, produces world-class jazz performances nightly, often reflecting and augmenting the programming in Rose Theater and the Appel Room.

Throughout the opening months of the 2025-26 season, performances include Herlin Riley‘s now annual Thanksgiving week run; Cyrus Chestnut Quartet; the great vocalist Mary Stallings, the cabaret-oriented Songbook Sundays series; Hometown Heroes; and Salsa Meets Jazz series. Dizzy’s iconic Thursday-Saturday evening Late Night Sessions, featuring some of the most talented emerging artists in jazz, continues.

Health and Safety Guidelines

We believe in the power of music to uplift, inspire, and create a sense of community. We very much look forward to welcoming you to The House of Swing at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall this season and are committed to employing all measures to ensure your safety as well as the safety of our artists and staff. Learn more about our health and safety guidelines at jazz.org.

Ticket Information

Current Jazz at Lincoln Center subscribers and audiences are invited to explore our Create Your Own subscription for all Rose Theater and Appel Room concerts and enjoy 10% off single ticket prices. The Create Your Own package allows subscribers to create a custom concert package of three or more performances across the season, personalized to individual interests and schedules, across both venues.

Subscribers with a Curated Series or fixed seat package enjoy a 15% discount off single ticket prices. Curated subscriptions come with the benefit of staying in the same seat for every performance and are renewable each year, allowing subscribers to keep their seats from season to season.

In order to reserve the best seats, current subscribers can take advantage of a priority period beginning today through June 30, 2025 before single sale tickets go on sale to the general public on July 22, 2025.

Becoming a subscriber is the best way to get the best seats at the guaranteed best prices for the entire season, as single ticket prices will increase based on demand as concerts approach. Subscribers also have the benefit of utilizing free, unlimited ticket exchanges to manage their schedule.

For more information on 2025-26 season subscriptions, visit jazz.org/subs. To order a subscription or to request information, please call the Subscription Services hotline at 212-258-9999, e-mail subscriptions@jazz.org, or visit jazz.org/subs.

Membership Discount

Jazz at Lincoln Center offers a robust Membership program with a wide array of benefits, including deep discounts on concert tickets. Individuals who join at the $100 level and above are eligible to receive VIP single ticket pre-sale access and discounted tickets to Jazz at Lincoln Center-produced concerts in Rose Theater and the Appel Room on the day of the event. Tickets must be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office or online beginning at 12:01 a.m. on the day of the performance. Members must show their valid membership card or log in to jazz.org using their account credentials to receive this discount. Subject to availability. Learn more and sign up at jazz.org/membership.

VIP single ticket pre-sale for donors, members, and subscribers will be available starting July 15, 2025. To access single tickets before the general public, become a Jazz at Lincoln Center member by July 14, 2025.

Pricing

Ticket prices for Rose Theater are $30 and up dependent upon seating section, except as noted below:

Family Concert tickets in Rose Theater are $10, $20 and $25.

Ticket prices for the Appel Room are $55 and up, dependent on seating section for the 7:00 p.m. sets, and $45 and up, depending upon seating section for the 9:30 p.m. sets.

Ticket prices for Dizzy’s Club start at $20.00.

Note: Hot Seats – $10 seats for each Rose Theater performance (excluding Family Concerts and other performances as specified) and select performances in the Appel Room – are available for purchase by the general public on the Wednesday prior to each performance. Tickets are subject to availability; please call 212-258-9877 for available Hot Seats performance dates.

Hot Seats are available only in person at the Box Office, with a maximum of two tickets per person. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Hot Seats Ticket Discount Program is supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

*Please note that a $3.50 Jazz at Lincoln Center Facility Fee applies to ALL ticket purchases, with the exception of $10 Hot Seats. A $7 handling fee also applies when purchasing tickets from CenterCharge or when purchasing tickets online via jazz.org.

All single tickets for the Appel Room and Rose Theater can be purchased through jazz.org 24 hours a day or through CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60th Street, Ground Floor.

Box Office hours:
Tuesday-Sunday: 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Monday: Closed
Open an additional half-hour after the scheduled start time of ticketed performances. On Wednesdays before a Rose theater concert, the Box Office will open at 10 a.m. to sell Hot Seats.

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER 2025-26 SEASON CONCERT CHRONOLOGY

Reflections on Africa
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
July 24-25, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater*
Music-directed by JLCO trombonist Vincent Gardner, this special summer concert features Africa-inspired compositions from John Coltrane, Randy Weston, Jackie McLean, René McLean, Horace Parlan, and more. With an opening performance from students participating in our Summer Jazz Academy, this multi-generational concert celebrates the music’s roots as well as some of its youngest stars.

Wynton Marsalis’ Afro! with Shenel Johns and Weedie Braimah
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
September 18-20, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Afro! brings the vibrant rhythms of Africa to the Rose Theater stage with the world premiere of a new composition by Wynton Marsalis. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra is joined by Ghanaian djembe virtuoso Weedie Braimah and extraordinary vocalist Shenel Johns for an exploration of jazz’s deep roots in African music.

Abdullah Ibrahim
October 3-4, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Just shy of his 91st birthday, South African legend and NEA Jazz Master Abdullah Ibrahim returns to Rose Theater for a career-spanning retrospective. Performing solo, in a trio, with his legendary Ekaya group, and alongside special guests Terence Blanchard, Kenny Garrett, and Cecil McBee, this concert puts Ibrahim’s full talents on display.

Celia Cruz: A Centennial Celebration!
October 17-18, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Experience the enduring legacy of Celia Cruz, the “Queen of Salsa,” with an all-star band led by JLCO bassist Carlos Henriquez, who played alongside Cruz in his youth. This tribute concert features guest vocalists Aymée Nuviola, Alain Pérez, and Ariacne Trujillo Duran and honors one of the most influential voices in Latin music.

Family Concert: Who is Celia Cruz?
October 18, 2025
3:00 p.m.
Rose Theater
Discover the life and music of Celia Cruz, the “Queen of Salsa,” in this engaging family-friendly concert featuring vocalist Ariacne Trujillo Duran. Learn about the fundamentals of salsa and Cruz’s monumental influence on Latin music with your host, JLCO bassist Carlos Henriquez.

Nduduzo Makhathini and the Music of Bheki Mseleku
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
October 24-25, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Take a musical journey through South African jazz with visionary pianist Nduduzo Makhathini. This dynamic concert finds the JLCO channeling the iconic sounds of multi-instrumentalist and composer Bheki Mseleku and features a new composition by Makhathini in a tribute to South Africa’s rich musical heritage.

Cyro Baptista at 75: A Banquet for the Spirits
November 7-8, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Brazilian percussion master Cyro Baptista, described by Wynton Marsalis as “truly one of the greatest musicians in the world,” marks his 75th birthday with a high-energy, unforgettable celebration at Rose Theater featuring special guests from across his genre-bending, globe-trotting career.

Steve Miller
November 14-15, 2025
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend Steve Miller returns to Jazz at Lincoln Center to honor two late legends: saxophonist Eddie Harris and drummer Chico Hamilton. Miller’s signature blues-rock guitar style will be complemented by an all-star band as well as the Louisiana rhythms of Lil’ Nathan & The Zydeco Big Timers for a night of lively rhythms and bluesy grooves.

Journey Through Jazz: The Mighty Negro Spirituals
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
November 21-22, 2025
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
The Journey Through Jazz series, now in its fifth year, continues with The Mighty Negro Spirituals, a musical adventure guided by JLCO trumpeter Marcus Printup. Discover how the Negro spirituals of Afro-American enslaved people became the bedrock of jazz and gospel music.
Part of the Lynne and Richard Pasculano Jazz Series, this is a pay-what-you-choose performance. Concert will be on sale on July 22.

Big Band Holidays
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
December 16-19, 2025: 7:30 p.m.
December 20, 2025: 2:00 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
December 21, 2025: 2:00 p.m.
Rose Theater
Ring in the holiday season with this annual fan-favorite performance filled with festive cheer! Featuring music direction by JLCO trombonist Chris Crenshaw and sensational vocalists Shenel Johns and Kate Kortum, this holiday spectacular brings new life to classic tunes.

Unity Jazz Festival
January 9-10, 2026
Events take place throughout Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center
The third annual Unity Jazz Festival brings together an all-star lineup of acts performing throughout Frederick P. Rose Hall, the House of Swing. With living legends, rising stars, and avid fans mingling between the Appel Room, Dizzy’s Club, and the Ertegun Atrium late into the night, the festival delivers an electric atmosphere where music lovers unite to experience jazz in all its forms.

Duke in Africa
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
January 15-17, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
This memorable concert – staged 60 years after Duke Ellington’s historic performance in Senegal – explores the composer’s profound connection to Africa. Co-music-directed by saxophonists Chris Lewis and Alexa Tarantino, the JLCO brings new life to compositions drawn from Ellington’s Afro-Bossa, Liberian Suite, and the Grammy Award-winning Togo Brava Suite.

Come Sunday: The Sacred Works of Duke Ellington
January 30-31, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Duke Ellington’s sacred compositions, which he called “the most important thing I have ever done,” will be brought to life by Grammy Award-winning pianist and music director Luther S. Allison. Vocalists Joy Brown, Georgia Heers, and a first-call big band will help explore the spiritual depths of Ellington’s music.

Dianne Reeves
February 13-14, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Five-time Grammy Award winner and NEA Jazz Master vocalist Dianne Reeves returns to Rose Theater for a memorable Valentine’s Day. Whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer, don’t miss this beloved tradition performed by one of the most extraordinary vocalists in jazz today.

The Commissions Series: Jeremy Pelt and Endea Owens
February 20-21, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Join trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and bassist Endea Owens for an evening of innovative jazz inspired by Africa. Both musicians, also known for their compositional brilliance, will present their latest works — Masks and Whispers of the Celestial Root: Songs of the Black Earth, respectively — offering fresh perspectives on Africa’s influence on jazz.

The Commissions Series: Carlos Henriquez and Obed Calvaire
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
February 27-28, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra bassist Carlos Henriquez and percussionist Obed Calvaire pay tribute to their respective Puerto Rican and Haitian roots with new compositions. Joined by saxophonist Godwin Louis and Grammy Award-winning pianist Zaccai Curtis, the JLCO spotlights the vibrant sounds of the Afro-Caribbean experience.

Big Band Afrobeats: Ulysses Owens Jr. and Michael Olatuja
March 6-7, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Backed by a full big band, drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. and British-Nigerian bassist Michael Olatuja present a unique blend of jazz and Afrobeat rhythms in the Appel Room. With their innovative approach and high-octane energy, they’ll take guests on a thrilling musical journey through Afrobeat’s infectious grooves.

Family Concert: Who is Louis Armstrong?
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
March 7, 2026
3:00 p.m.
Rose Theater
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra pays tribute to the incomparable Louis Armstrong, one of jazz’s foundational figures, in this lively family concert. Introduce your youngest listeners to “Pops” and his groundbreaking contributions to jazz with a performance that will forever change the way they think about music.

The Commissions Series: Danilo Pérez and Godwin Louis
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
March 12-14, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Two stirring new commissions get their debut: Grammy Award-winning Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez’s The Panáfrica Suite: Echoes from the Isthmus and saxophonist Godwin Louis’ African Roots, Diasporic Routes: Benin, Kongo, and the Music of the Americas. Joined by renowned singer Catherine Russell and percussionist Weedie Braimah, Pérez, Louis, and the JLCO treat audiences to a transatlantic voyage across the history of our music.

Bill Frisell: 75th Birthday Celebration with Special Guests
March 27-28, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Jazz guitar icon Bill Frisell takes over the Appel Room for a star-studded weekend that looks to the future while renewing the past. On Friday, he continues his “In My Dreams” project with longtime collaborators Jenny Scheinman, Hank Roberts, Eyvind Kang, Thomas Morgan, and Rudy Royston; on Saturday, he’ll duet with vocalist Petra Haden and alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.

Journey Through Jazz: Overtures to Africa
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
April 10-11, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Overtures to Africa explores Africa’s influence on some of jazz’s greatest legends: Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach. Part of the Journey Through Jazz concert series, this performance brings the JLCO to the intimate Appel Room, delving into the profound impact of African culture on jazz.
Part of the Lynne and Richard Pasculano Jazz Series, this is a pay what you choose performance. Concert will be on-sale on July 22.

Birth of the Blues
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
April 17-18, 2026
7:30 p.m
Rose Theater
Embark on a captivating journey through the evolution of blues, starting with W. C. Handy, the “Father of the Blues.” Led by JLCO saxophonist Sherman Irby, this concert traces the blues up the Mississippi River, showcasing its deep roots in American culture and its development into a musical genre that revolutionized the world.

Oscar Peterson: A Centennial Celebration
May 8-9, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Piano titan Oscar Peterson looms large as one of the 20th century’s great improvisers. Join us for a star-studded night in honor of one of the piano’s greatest practitioners.
Concert will be on sale on July 22.

Sketches of Miles: Miles Davis at 100
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
May 14-16, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
The JLCO commemorates the centennial of one of jazz’s most influential figures, Miles Davis. Featuring the orchestrations of one of Davis’ greatest collaborators, the endlessly inventive Gil Evans, these performances demonstrate why the innovative trumpeter’s big band work was every bit as important as his small group output.

Jazzmeia Horn and Her Noble Force
May 29-30, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Grammy Award-nominated and NAACP Image Award-winning vocalist Jazzmeia Horn returns to the Appel Room with Her Noble Force big band. Known for her bold interpretations and fearless improvisations, Horn will present her own music – as well as works from female composers who’ve inspired her – in front of the Manhattan skyline.

Etienne Charles: Folklore LIVE Vol. 2
June 5-6, 2026
Friday night sets are at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Saturday sets are at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Appel Room
Trumpeter Etienne Charles, known for his innovative stagings of Caribbean lore, returns to the Appel Room to present Folklore LIVE Vol. 2. Charles unveils new musical stories rooted in various elements of the African diaspora connecting the African diaspora – including, but not limited to, low country Gullah-Geechee rituals, Haitian Vodou, Afro-Mexican Son Jarocho, and Garifuna rhythms – blending big band textures with dancers, masquerade, and spoken word.

Soul of Brazil
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
June 12-13, 2026
7:30 p.m.
Rose Theater
Featuring the JLCO with Wynton Marsalis, this concert brings the unmistakable rhythms of Brazilian music to Rose Theater. Featuring new music from special guest bandolinist Hamilton de Holanda as well as the works of legendary composer Moacir Santos, this concert amplifies the heartbeat of Brazil, giving shape to its musical soul.

A High School Festival Keeps Duke Ellington Very Much Alive

Festive atmosphere at Essentially Ellington 2025
(photo by Gus Aronson)

In a dressing room behind the stage in the Metropolitan Opera House, Wynton Marsalis, the trumpeter and educator, intently watched a live feed of the big band representing the Osceola County School for the Arts, from Kissimmee, Fla. They were playing Dizzy Gillespie’s “Things to Come,” a piece that can expose any weaknesses in a big band. Being a good jazz musician isn’t just about playing fast and loud and high, but this song requires musicians to do all of that.

The school’s lead trumpet player was in the middle of a solo. A dexterous player who could hit the high notes, he sounded like a professional. “Watch, the director’s going to wave off the backgrounds here,” Mr. Marsalis said, using some colorful language to say the soloist had not gotten to his good stuff yet.

The director then made a small gesture to the rest of his band, telling them to wait to let the solo develop. It was a chart that Mr. Marsalis, the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, had surely heard live hundreds of times, but each time it is full of small decisions like these, making it a new experience.

It has been nearly a century since Duke Ellington’s orchestra became the house band at the Cotton Club on 142nd Street. Even there, where Ellington and his group of Black musicians played in front of all-white audiences, patrons were expected to be active listeners. Ellington is quoted in the book “Duke Ellington’s America” as saying the club “demanded absolutely silence” during performances, and that anybody making noise would quickly be ushered out the door.

Ellington knew his work had a signature. He wrote with particular members of his orchestra, like the saxophonist Johnny Hodges or the trumpeter Cootie Williams, in mind, and he believed that nobody else could sound like them, no matter how hard they tried.

Still, at Essentially Ellington, an annual high school big-band festival organized by Jazz at Lincoln Center and held over the weekend, teenagers from all over the world tried their hardest to channel those musicians anyway.

This year, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the festival, 30 big bands of the 127 that sent in application tapes came to New York to compete for top honors, up from the usual 15. The finalists included 27 American groups and bands from Australia, Japan and Spain. Each group selected three songs to perform from the Essentially Ellington library. The top 10 finishers advanced to a second and final, competitive round. The top three then played an exhibition concert — at the opera house instead of at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, since the additional capacity was needed — before a winner was announced.

But the event’s vibe, while exacting, does not feel like something out of the movie “Whiplash” — at least not anymore. Years ago, organizers felt the competition was getting too cutthroat, and looked to soften its edges. Now, students perform, but also jam with kids from other schools, attend clinics with professionals, and have meals where they’re seated not by school, but by the instrument they play. In the hallways, members of different schools spontaneously burst into song together.

“It’s like the top arts festival,” said Julius Tolentino, the jazz director at Newark Academy in Livingston, N.J., whose band won the competition in 2024. “There’s nothing that compares to this. They roll out the red carpet for the students. It’s changed the way band directors all over the world deal with jazz music.”

The organization’s work isn’t limited to the contest. It runs an annual training program for band directors and sends out professional musicians, often members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, to help guide bands that qualify for the finals.

The festival also doubles as a tool for the creation of a big band canon. For 30 years, the Jazz at Lincoln Center team has created sheet music for pieces by Ellington and some of his contemporaries, like Gillespie or Count Basie or Benny Carter, and has sent it out to schools interested in competing, for free. That process is not always simple, and often involves digging through the archives at the Smithsonian to look at existing, handwritten scores and transcribing from recordings.

“There’s a philosophy that jazz is a methodology, not an art form that has a canon,” said Todd Stoll, the vice president of education at Jazz at Lincoln Center. “The historical viewpoint of this music was, I won’t say ignored, but it wasn’t something that there was much focus on at the university level. I went all the way through a master’s degree at a major conservatory. I never played a note of Duke Ellington’s music.”

That would be unfathomable now, in part because of the work that Jazz at Lincoln Center has done. Mr. Marsalis bristled at the idea that Ellington was not an international star before the festival existed, but Essentially Ellington, and the work that makes it possible, may do as much as anything to ensure that his work persists.

For Mr. Marsalis, who has been at the center of debates about the jazz canon for decades, this could be a victory lap. But he insists on Essentially Ellington as an example of how playing old music does not need to be a backward-looking endeavor.

“We are not cynical,” he said. “When you’re establishing a new mythology, how much time do you have to attack the old mythology?”

Every band that auditions for a spot in New York is a part of that new mythology, an example of how the music is not a historical document, but something that is alive as long as it is being interpreted.
The experience, however, can be intimidating until you are a part of it.

When Dr. Ollie Liddell, the band director at Memphis Central High School in Memphis, first saw videos on YouTube of groups that had reached the finals of the Essentially Ellington festival, over a decade ago, he thought to himself: “We’re never going to have a band that good.”

Memphis Central is a public high school, and like most public school band directors, Dr. Liddell is responsible for not just the jazz band, but the marching band and concert ensembles, too. He has to handle fund-raising and convince clinicians to come in and work with his band. None of his jazz students receive private instruction, save one, who receives lessons from a Memphis Central alumnus over Zoom. Essentially Ellington can’t always be top of mind.

That’s not the case for many of the groups that make it to New York, with arts magnet schools and private academies offering instrument-specific instructors, and a number of students taking private lessons as well. But even without those luxuries, a resourceful director and passionate kids can still compete. The proof? Memphis Central took first place at this year’s competition.

It is a cliché to say that jazz is an interactive music, a conversation. But those conversations aren’t confined to the stage. On Saturday, during its final performance for the judges, Memphis Central took the stage and the sound of Ellington’s “Rockabye River” came all at once. The rumble of the drum set’s low tom. The shout of the horns. The growling trumpet soloist punctuating each of the written phrases.

The work was brought to life and made new. A crowd filled with competitors and rivals sat with wide eyes and open mouths, with some yelping their approval.

None of them, clearly, were cynical.

By Chris Almeida
Photographs and Video by Gus Aronson
Source: New York Times