Wynton Marsalis

The eighth installment in Marsalis' exhaustive series of 1999 releases, this disc was originally offered as a freebie in the mail only if you bought the previous seven, and it didn't appear in the shops on its own until 2000. It was a strange marketing scheme, and one that unnecessarily muted the fanfare for the most artistically successful of Marsalis' original works in his 1999 series. Marciac, a small town in France, hosts an internationally renowned jazz festival and even erected a statue of Marsalis, which moved the composer/trumpeter to conceive this 76-minute suite for his favorite septet lineup.

Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis first worked together at The Allen Room at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center for two nights in 2007, and while at first it would seem to be an odd pairing, it really isn’t: Nelson's singing and guitar playing have always fallen well to the jazz side of country all along anyway, and he’s hardly been a garden variety hat act during his long career, while Marsalis has long worked to reintroduce jazz as a viable popular form in American music. It’s about synthesis, really, and so it makes perfect sense for Nelson and Marsalis to turn to the music of Ray Charles, one of the greatest assimilators of American pop music - all forms of it, from gospel to blues, country, jazz, and R&B-for their encore shows at the heralded jazz house - this time for two sold-out nights at Rose Theater in February 2009 with special guest Norah Jones…

The blues is one of America’s greatest cultural inventions—and now, it provides the backbone for one of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Wynton Marsalis’s most innovative and colossal works. In the hands of the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of celebrated conductor Cristian Măcelaru, Blues Symphony (Marsalis’s second symphony) takes the 12-bar blues and explodes it into a lyrical, kaleidoscopic history of American music.

Swing into the holiday spirit with BIG BAND HOLIDAYS II, the sequel to the critically acclaimed 2015 release from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Featuring original arrangements of holiday classics selected from Big Band Holiday concerts spanning from 2015 to 2018, nine-time GRAMMY Award winner and Pulitzer Prize winner Wynton Marsalis and the JLCO are joined by an all-star assortment of guest vocalists, including Veronica Swift, Denzal Sinclaire, Catherine Russell, Audrey Shakir, and the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Jader Bignamini present Wynton Marsalis’ Blues Symphony. The work is a triumphant ode to the power of the blues and the scope of America’s musical heritage. With a blend of influences from ragtime to habanera, the work takes listeners on a sonic journey through America’s revolutionary era, the early beginnings of jazz in New Orleans, and a big city soundscape that serves as a nod to the Great Migration. Detroit being one of the most vibrant melting pots of musical cultures in the US, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra seems the ideal advocate for this original contribution to the symphonic repertoire. The recording is also the first with Jader Bignamini, giving a new dimension to his music directorship.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and special guests take you through 100 years of jazz piano on their new album, Handful of Keys. Star pianists Joey Alexander, Dick Hyman, Myra Melford, Helen Sung, Isaiah J. Thompson, and the JLCO’s own Dan Nimmer grab hold of all 88 keys and reveal the full extent of the piano’s evolution over the 20th century. This landmark live performance will be released on 9/15/17 by Blue Engine Records.

Blue Engine Records, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s in-house recording label, releases Sherman Irby’s Inferno by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Irby, the lead alto saxophonist of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, cleverly interprets Dante Alighieri’s epic poem from “The Divine Comedy” to create a sweeping work that takes listeners on a lyrically swinging tour of the underworld’s nine circles.