Jazz for Young People

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, 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 US, 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.

Wynton Marsalis (music director, trumpet) is the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Born in New Orleans in 1961, he is the son of renowned jazz pianist and music educator, Ellis Marsalis, Jr. Marsalis was gifted his first trumpet at age six by Al Hirt; soon after, he began playing in New Orleans’s famed Fairview Baptist Church Band led by banjoist Danny Barker. However, it wasn’t until he turned 12 that Marsalis began to formally train on the trumpet and perform in bands throughout the city, from the New Orleans Philharmonic and New Orleans Youth Orchestra to funk bands, concert bands, and small jazz ensembles. As a teenager, his passion for music rapidly escalated. In 1979, at the age of seventeen, Marsalis moved to New York City to study classical trumpet at the Juilliard School. He quickly entrenched himself in New York’s effervescent jazz scene, launching his career with the legendary Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. At just 19, Marsalis hit the road with his own band—he has been touring the world ever since. From 1981 to the time of this writing, he has performed 5,328 concerts in 856 distinct cities and 66 countries around the world.