Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
Overture Center-Overture Hall 201 State St., Madison, Wisconsin 53703

Frank Stewart
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on stage.
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
media release: Experience the world's premier big band, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Marsalis, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, is a trumpeter, composer and advocate of American culture. The group performs a vast repertoire of music, from historic and rare compositions, including works by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams and Charles Mingus, to new music from the group’s unrivalled collection of world-renowned composers and arrangers. This is your invitation to enjoy an unforgettable evening with the best jazz performers in the country. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 29 in Overture Hall. Tickets ($40-$90) are available at overture.org.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, comprised of 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players today, will perform a repertoire honoring and showcasing the important bebop, cool school and hard bop stylings. Paying tribute to the legends of bebop, the JLCO will perform new, energetic big band arrangements. The orchestra will also explore the cool jazz movement, known for its mellow lyricism and striking, often surprising arrangements, and hard bop, distinguished by its bluesy melodicism and virtuosic vocabulary.
About Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis (Music Director, Trumpet) is the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Born in New Orleans, La., in 1961 to a musical family, Marsalis was gifted his first trumpet at age six by Al Hirt. By eight, he began playing in the famed Fairview Baptist Church Band led by Danny Barker. Yet it was not until he turned 12 that Marsalis began his formal training on the trumpet. Subsequently, Wynton began performing in bands all over the city, from the New Orleans Philharmonic and New Orleans Youth Orchestra to a funk band called the Creators. His passion for music rapidly escalated. As a young teenager fresh out of high school, Wynton moved to New York City in 1979 to attend The Juilliard School to study classical music. Once there, however, he found that jazz was calling him. His career quickly launched when he traded Juilliard for Art Blakey’s band, The Jazz Messengers. By 19, Wynton hit the road with his own band and has been touring the world ever since. From 1981 to date, Wynton has performed 4,777 concerts in 849 distinct cities and 64 countries around the world. Marsalis made his recording debut as a leader in 1982 and has since recorded 110 jazz and classical albums, four alternative records, and released five DVDs. In total, he has recorded 1,539 songs at the time of this writing. Marsalis is the winner of nine GRAMMY Awards, and his oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He’s the only musician to win a GRAMMY Award in two categories, jazz and classical, during the same year (1983, 1984).
Celebrating 20 years in Madison, Wis., OVERTURE CENTER FOR THE ARTS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization that features seven state-of-the-art performance spaces and five galleries where national and international touring artists, nine resident companies and hundreds of local artists engage people in nearly 500,000 educational and artistic experiences each year. Overture’s mission is to support and elevate our community’s creative culture, economy and quality of life through the arts. overture.org