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He is the face of jazz

Wynton Marsalis embraces his roles as musician, bandleader, ambassador

By Walter Tunis Contributing Music Writer

On any other concert night at Danville's Norton Center for the Arts, the music would have wound down, the stage would have darkened and the featured artists would have packed their gear and left for home. So it also seemed on an early April evening in 2003. When the clock passed 11, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra had been giving life to the swing and bop music of Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Hank Mobley and Dizzy Gillespie for nearly three hours. As the 15- member ensemble began to downshift into the locomotive rhythm of The Caboose, a tune by its artistic director and resident jazz celebrity, Wynton Marsalis, it seemed as if the show had served its final course.

Instead, Marsalis announced that the orchestra was merely taking another break and, for the faithful in the audience who chose to stick around — and for the benefit of a camera crew that was filming the performance for BET — would return for a set of Jelly Roll Morton music. By the time the performance came to a stop, it was 12:30 in the morning.

"I remember that gig in Danville," Marsalis said Monday by phone from New York. "I remember we played (Monk's) Oksa T. We played Jelly Morton's Dead Man Blues. We did a wide range of music. A lot of funny stuff happened that night just between the cats in the band."

Admittedly, that was an extreme evening, even for Marsalis and the tireless orchestra, which comes to the Singletary Center for the Arts on Saturday as part of the Alltech Festival. But if you think the stamina and swing that fueled the golden age of jazz have no place or can produce no vitality in the present day, then you haven't experienced the living music history of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

"The best way to bring the message of something is by doing it," Marsalis said.

And that is what he has been doing for most of his life. A highly regarded trumpeter for Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers while still in his teens, Marsalis, 46, has become, during the past quarter-century, the closest thing jazz has to a bona fide star. He can talk fluidly and extensively on jazz history (and, in Ken Burns' 2001 documentary Jazz, he did), but Marsalis is known mostly for putting his music into motion. He has led a variety of small ensembles, written music for ballets and symphony orchestras, and composed soundtracks. His primary legacy, though, will be Jazz at Lincoln Center.

"I just want to see us fulfill our mission, which is to inspire and grow audiences for jazz," he said. "Our mission is very basic. We want to lift people's spirits. We want to create community through this music. Our tools are education and performance."

In its 2007-08 season, Jazz at Lincoln Center produced nearly 1,000 jazz events, including its New York-based concert and educational programs as well as the orchestra's worldwide touring performances. Yet for those of us in Kentucky, the 2003 Danville concert and Saturday's show at Singletary reflect the inroads that Marsalis has made in establishing the music of Ellington, Monk, Gillespie and, increasingly, the orchestra's own members beyond the doors of Lincoln Center.

"The ironic thing, to me, is that when we're playing in smaller, rural areas, the audiences seem to have a better concept of the art and culture of this music than in a lot of hugely populated areas," bassist Carlos Henriquez said. "When we go to the Midwest and play a town like, say, Peoria, it's like we're playing in the real America. The reception in these areas is great."

Marsalis concurred. "I've played places like St. Angelo, Texas," he said. "After the gig, there was a line of 15 or 20 people to meet us with their kids ... and they all had horns. And I'm wondering, 'Where do all these people come from in this place? How can they be so interested in this music?"

Part of the answer might be that these audiences are hearing the music of past jazz masters in a concert setting for the first time. But if that's the case, you have to equally credit the orchestra's muscular performance drive. And to understand that, you need to view another of Marsalis' multitude of talents: leading the band.

"We've got a band that consists, I believe, of some of the great jazz musicians of our time," Henriquez said. "I mean, these are some great, great musicians. While Wynton gives us opportunities to do what we want to do, he also pushes us to become great."

Marsalis said, "For musicians that are younger than me, like the ones I meet who are still in high school, I try to be a mentor. But at a certain point in the orchestra, that changes. Like with Carlos. He is his own entity now. I'm more of a friend and big brother to him.

"Some of us grew up together — like (orchestra tenor/soprano saxophonist and co-clarinetist) Victor Goines. Man, we went to kindergarten together. And there are the older musicians like Joe (Temperley, the orchestra's longtime baritone/soprano saxophonist and co-clarinetist). In that case, he's like my older brother."

But for Marsalis, the mission of bringing jazz to the world remains a mighty one. He showers continual praise on his bandmates and the staff of Jazz at Lincoln Center for helping to raise the music's visibility, and he says jazz has an even bigger role to play in everyone's future.

"You know, I always want to see the music performed in more places. I want to see us use it to heal our country. It can help do that.

"So, in that sense, the music is better than it was. But it's not as good as it's going to be."