National jazz act

Wynton Marsalis

The king of jazz

Wynton Marsalis has become our era's self-perpetuating jazz juggernaut. As artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center (and jazz's first Pulitzer Prize winner) he's arguably the most powerful jazz musician in America -- maybe the most powerful jazz musician ever. You can't say he hasn't worked for it. He seems to write, record, and perform live nonstop. His educational efforts are also tireless -- introducing kids to jazz in his own version of Leonard Bernstein's Young Peoples' Concerts at Lincoln Center, proselytizing for the music on his tours with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. When the New York Times needs a centennial piece on Duke Ellington, they call Wynton. Wynton's jazz might not be everybody's -- his narrow definition of the music falls short of the expansive vision of his hero Ellington. That said, his music is never less than interesting and when he puts it all together -- like on the Pulitzer-winning 1997 Blood on the Fields -- he packs a considerable wallop. Take The Midnight Blues, a ballads-with-strings entry in his Standard Time series, from 1998. The set-up screams "Smooth jazz!" But Marsalis muscles and sobs with his big tone, digs with rhythmic aggression into Sammy Cahn and Julie Styne's "I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry," cries with strength and just a touch of throat-catching vibrato, breaks into near-vocal-like abstraction. It's not difficult to see why Wynton has won the jazz category in four of our last six Best Music Polls.

-- Jon Garelick

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A Wynton Marsalis page at JazzWorld

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