Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of Classical and Jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for a jazz recording.
Marsalis is the son of jazz musician, Ellis Marsalis, Jr. (pianist), grandson to Ellis Marsalis, Sr. and brother to Branford (saxophonist), Delfeayo (trombonist), Mboya, and Jason (drummer).
In 1987, Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, Jazz at Lincoln Center was installed as new constituent of Lincoln Center. In October 2004, Marsalis opened Frederick P. Rose Hall, the world's first institution for jazz containing three performance spaces (including the first concert hall designed specifically for jazz) along with recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities. Wynton presently serves as Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards. In 1983 and 1984, he became the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical records, and he is the only artist to win Grammy Awards for five consecutive years (1983–1987).
Among honorary degrees Marsalis has received have included those conferred by Columbia, Harvard, Howard, the State University of New York, Princeton and Yale. Marsalis was honored with the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal and the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement and was dubbed an Honorary Dreamer by the I Have a Dream Foundation. The New York Urban League awarded Maraslis with the Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership and the American Arts Council presented him with the Arts Education Award.
Time magazine list of promising Americans under the age 40 selected Maralis in 1995, and in 1996, Time celebrated Marsalis as one of America's 25 most influential people. In November 2005, Marsalis received the National Medal of Arts. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan proclaimed Marsalis an international ambassador of goodwill for the United States by appointing him a UN Messenger of Peace (2001).
In 1997, Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio, Blood On The Fields. In a personal note to Marsalis, Zarin Mehta wrote, "I was not surprised at your winning the Pulitzer Prize for Blood On The Fields. It is a broad, beautifully painted canvas that impresses and inspires. It speaks to us all ... I’m sure that, somewhere in the firmament, Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and legions of others are smiling down on you".
Marsalis, with his father and brothers, are group recipients of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award.
Marsalis has toured 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica, and nearly five million copies of his recordings have been sold worldwide.
Music awards
Pulitzer Prize for Music
* 1997 Blood on the Fields, oratorio
Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group
* 1986 Black Codes (From the Underground)
* 1987 J Mood
* 1988 Marsalis Standard Time - Volume I
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)
* 1983 Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis & the National Philharmonic Orchestra for Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat/L. Mozart: Trumpet Concerto In D/Hummel: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat
* 1984 Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis & the English Chamber Orchestra for Wynton Marsalis, Edita Gruberova: Handel, Purcell, Torelli, Fasch, Molter
Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo
* 1983 Think of One
* 1984 Hot House Flowers
* 1985 Black Codes From the Underground
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children
* 2000 Listen to the Storyteller
