Latest news with #Marsalis
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘It's just an overwhelming wall of terror': Amanda Marsalis on directing ‘The Pitt's' mass casualty episode
Amanda Marsalis is the first to admit she wasn't sure if she was right for The Pitt when the project came the director's way. "I was told, 'Oh, it's a medical drama from John Wells.' I was like, 'Oh, really, OK.' I didn't think of it as my thing. And I say that with humility," Marsalis tells Gold Derby. "It's not that I'm a snob. I just thought of it as a some type of thing that maybe wasn't my type of thing. And I was wrong. I read it and was like, 'Oh, this is good.'" More from GoldDerby 'Karate Kid: Legends' knocked as 'uninspired' and 'unnecessary' by critics 'There's no skimming a Wes Anderson script': 'The Phoenician Scheme' cast on working with the director 'The worst has already happened, so now I have everything to gain': Meagan Good on love, loss, and empowering women in 'Forever' Part of that was the show's real-time format, with each episode depicting one hour of a 15-hour shift, dropping viewers deep into the thick of the ER as cases and stress escalate. Marsalis, who's helmed episodes of Ozark and most recently Ransom Canyon, directed four episodes of the first season of The Pitt, including "6:00 P.M.," the 12th episode featuring the mass casualty incident. The episode is Marsalis' Emmy submission. Marsalis spoke to Gold Derby about helming that harrowing hour, filming on a full hospital set, the "special sauce" of The Pitt, and more. Gold Derby: What were you told about the show before the script came to you? Amanda Marsalis: I was told, "Oh, it's a medical drama from John Wells." I was like, "Oh, really, OK." I didn't think of it as my thing. And I say that with humility. It's not that I'm a snob. I just thought of it as a some type of thing that maybe wasn't my type of thing. And I was wrong. I read it and was like, "Oh, this is good." Not that medical shows aren't good. It really captured me, and I immediately felt very lucky to be involved. I think I got [the scripts for Episodes] 1 and 2, or maybe just 1. I don't remember. I met with [Wells and creator R. Scott Gemmill] the next day or something like that. And I have a relationship with John because we had done some development. I'd do anything to work with John. I appreciate people who are good at their jobs. Were you looking for another series after ? Marsalis: I don't think I was looking. I had actually done Ransom Canyon already. I finished it a week before. I packed up my life in Albuquerque and came home. And one thing that about The Pitt that was amazing was it filmed in L.A. I got to sleep in my own bed and be with my boyfriend and be with my cats and my dog and have a life and go to dinner with my friends. The quality of our crew too in L.A. was just extraordinary, like every single person. So it was also just like, "It's a job in L.A., sweet." The show is emotional anyway, but all four of your episodes are very emotional. Did you get a choice of which episodes to direct or you just assigned? Marsalis: I really was told, and I originally was like, "Oh, can I do Episode 3 first?" Because I could use a little more breathing room. And John was like, "No." And I was like, "Got it." And then when I read them, I truly was like, "Oh, this is a gift. And I'm so lucky." [With Episode] 2, you're continuing to establish the visual language of the show and how we're going to work, which is something I really like being part of. It's really like this extension and support of your pilot director. And then the [other] episodes ... when I read Episode 8, where the little girl drowns, I was like, "Scott, like, really?" But I was so sad. It's my honor to direct it. But I truly, definitely got the gut-punch ones. [Episode 4] with Spencer (Madison Mason) dying. My father had passed away like a year earlier. My father had passed away in my life and we had multiple crew members who had recently lost lost fathers. And it was really, like, that was a lot. And Noah [Wyle] wrote that episode too, which was really special. Warrick Page/Max This set is an actual hospital set full stop. What was the prep like, especially with your first episode? Marsalis: It's sort of a two-part answer. One is they designed the space before they wrote the show. Nina [Ruscio, production designer] did an amazing job at creating sight lines and creating our space. So the script is written for the way the hospital is. So you're two steps ahead, sort of, in a way. And unlike other shows, you could get scripts and be like, "OK, great. Well, this fight sequence is written for an imaginary place, and now I need to totally change it so it fits to like the location we found," or whatever. But The Pitt is always on set, like they're never any other place, right? There's a sort of the waiting room, which is a separate stage. So you we would basically be standing at the doors at lunch, and the second they go to lunch, you're like, "OK, let's pick up where we left off. Scene 8. We're gonna walk here and go this way. We're gonna need this person over there. We're gonna need this person over there. This is gonna come here. I'm going to see them in the background. I want to have them cross there. OK, that way." And then we eventually built a model. Nina built a model of the set, which was really helpful. So that's when we went to go do [Episode] 12 and we're having this mass casualty event. There was no way I could fit it in at lunches. So we she made little beds, and we had, like, yellow zone beds, pink zone beds, red zone beds. We did everything basically via the model. SEE The Pitt star Supriya Ganesh on Mohan 'reworking' her trauma and when she'll realize Abbot is flirting with her Episode 12 is your big one and arguably the big one of the season too. It begins with you guys clearing out the hospital of patients and bringing in equipment to prep for the mass casualty, and you really get a sense of the preparation and procedure. Marsalis: Yeah, and most of our background were with us from Day 1. Because the story of an ER is people can wait for 12 hours to get care or whatever. So we had this lady, this who had a fake pregnancy [belly]. And she just was in this corner every day, and she would hide books in her, her little fake belly, and then be reading her books in between takes, and then put her book away. We had to say goodbye to all those people in Episode 12, which, in a certain way, was like saying goodbye to a bunch of your crew. And there's a lot of technical aspects of The Pitt, but you also you need to do all that very well, so then you can feel the feelings right. Because you want to understand how horrible this mass casualty is, how it is affecting our doctors, how it's affecting our patients, and feel the pain of it. But you do that by prepping incredibly well. I would do that at lunch, like, "This will go here. That'll go there." And our doctors are so helpful because the doctors sort of block the medical scenes because they know this person should be there, this person should be there. And then you can go in and go, "Oh, but I really want this eyeline. And they'll go, "Oh, OK, I can change that. I'll put that there." That episode is only 40 minutes. It's the shortest episode of the whole season, but so much happens. You really showed every single person and every single case, and the viewer still feels like, "Oh, I know what's going on here." The camera's moving so quickly and we see every element of what goes on during a mass casualty. The vibe is so different from your first three episodes, when the pace is so much slower. What was that shift like? Marsalis: Yeah, in a certain way, there's a lot more intimacy to those first three episodes, right? And I think something in doing this episode was me making sure that I retained as much of that as I could in that we just don't want it to become basically — I don't know how else to say it — but medical porn. You just didn't want it to be, like, about medically what was happening to everybody, because I think that's the real special sauce of The Pitt. It's very graphic in its medical knowledge and experiences. But what really matters is how we feel and how we care and how we're connected to everybody. And I do think there's something lovely, like we have these new doctors that show up in Episode 12 and I think people are like, "Well, I'm so invested in The Pitt at this point that if you work at The Pitt, I love you," right? Like those actors just showed up, and people were like, "Oh, cool with your Dunkin' Donuts." The night shift is instantly iconic. Marsalis: Yeah! And there's just something so wonderful about watching all these people who are just trying to do their best work. And I think I, as a director, made sure that I was getting performances that showed how we were feeling. It was hard in a certain way in that episode because it's just an overwhelming wall of terror basically. I do love when Shen (Ken Kirby) is sipping the Dunkin' and Robby's (Wyle) eyeing him after he had just grilled him about the protocol. Marsalis: And [Shen's] like, "I've got this." [Laughs] There's nice humor moments. We had a lot of talented actors who know how to play in all those spaces, luckily, and Noah sets a really amazing tone as somebody who doesn't take himself too seriously. But you can do that because you've prepped so well, and you're so prepared that you have the space to play. John Johnson/Max Noah gives a the big speech in the beginning when he goes through the protocol with the slap bands and everything. What went into that scene with many actors and him monologuing for so long? Marsalis: They don't have sides on set on John Wells shows. So that means you need to show up knowing your lines. That speech is, like, I don't know, four pages long or something. And so we're like, "OK, I like to read the words before we even rehearse." So we're like, "OK, here we go." And then Noah was like, "OK." And he did it. And then it's just being making sure — so many of these people, it's their first day on the job. We have to remember we've been with them for, like, 11 hours now, but this is just their first day at work, so you have to show how scary it is. Yeah, I love Mel (Taylor Dearden) being worried about manning the yellow zone, and then later on, she's like, "Let's donate blood." This episode also brings back Abbot (Shawn Hatosy). We see him donating blood via his leg just so he could keep seeing patients. I talked to Shawn and there was a discussion about that since we didn't know at that point that he is an amputee. Marsalis: It was more about saving that reveal, right? And because it would be very hard to tell then too in that moment. I needed to make one point right, then not two. And then also just where the camera is going to be. It was much nicer, I think, to see that [reveal] in the finale. SEE The Pitt star Tracy Ifeachor thinks about Collins and Robby's backstory 'all the time': 'It just didn't work out because it's not the right time' The show doesn't have a score. What was that like for you when you're putting together an edit when you normally might have score or temp music? Marsalis: It was John's idea from the beginning and, and all of us were like, "Cool, man. Hope it works." And then it did. I mean, there's a tiny bit of score here and there, like the littlest heartbeat, and it's just all it needs. Something about the show really clicked for me, though. I was a photographer before I was a director. So, visually, getting the camera to move and getting the crosses and getting, like, this scene's gonna end and it's gonna fold into that one, which is gonna fold into this one. It was just an exciting challenge every episode. I think it's the episode when the girl who OD'd is leaving, and we start with Dana (Katherine LaNasa) and Robby in the break room. We don't cut. They come all the way down. Then the girl who ODs comes behind them with her parents. She comes in, she spots the parents of the kid who OD'd, and then jumps out. You're on such an emotional roller coaster. Some people are having a good time, some people are having a bad time. It's really fun. Then there's the whole "Robby has to pee" for however many episodes. [Laughs] I hope he gets to pee more than once in Season 2. Are you returning for Season 2? Marsalis: I am towards the end because I am on another project that is overlapping in a major way. They're gonna come up with some other good sh--. [Laughs] I'm more excited to see what they do with character development because it's such a crazy and strange constriction to have just a day to tell us about these people. But you feel like you know all those characters, right? It's sort of this magical special sauce that all the writers really managed to do, like, get enough information in there about everybody and the quality of people that they are, and what their hopes and dreams are. I'm just excited to learn more about everybody really. Season 1 of The Pitt is streaming on Max. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Best of GoldDerby 'The worst has already happened, so now I have everything to gain': Meagan Good on love, loss, and empowering women in 'Forever' 'The Better Sister': Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks on their 'fun partnership' and the 'satisfying' killer reveal The Making of 'Beast Games': Behind the scenes of Prime Video's record-breaking competition series Click here to read the full article.
New York Times
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A High School Festival Keeps Duke Ellington Very Much Alive
In a dressing room behind the stage in the Metropolitan Opera House, Wynton Marsalis, the trumpeter and educator, intently watched a live feed of the big band representing the Osceola County School for the Arts, from Kissimmee, Fla. They were playing Dizzy Gillespie's 'Things to Come,' a piece that can expose any weaknesses in a big band. Being a good jazz musician isn't just about playing fast and loud and high, but this song requires musicians to do all of that. The school's lead trumpet player was in the middle of a solo. A dexterous player who could hit the high notes, he sounded like a professional. 'Watch, the director's going to wave off the backgrounds here,' Mr. Marsalis said, using some colorful language to say the soloist had not gotten to his good stuff yet. The director then made a small gesture to the rest of his band, telling them to wait to let the solo develop. It was a chart that Mr. Marsalis had surely heard live hundreds of times, but each time it is full of small decisions like these, making it a new experience. It has been nearly a century since Duke Ellington's orchestra became the house band at the Cotton Club on 142nd Street. Even there, where Ellington and his group of Black musicians played in front of all-white audiences, patrons were expected to be active listeners. Ellington is quoted in the book 'Duke Ellington's America' as saying the club 'demanded absolutely silence' during performances, and that anybody making noise would quickly be ushered out the door. Ellington knew his work had a signature. He wrote with particular members of his orchestra, like the saxophonist Johnny Hodges or the trumpeter Cootie Williams, in mind, and he believed that nobody else could sound like them, no matter how hard they tried. Still, at Essentially Ellington, an annual high school big-band festival organized by Jazz at Lincoln Center and held over the weekend, teenagers from all over the world tried their hardest to channel those musicians anyway. This year, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the festival, 30 big bands of the 127 that sent in application tapes came to New York to compete for top honors, up from the usual 15. The finalists included 27 American groups and bands from Australia, Japan and Spain. Each group selected three songs to perform from the Essentially Ellington library. The top 10 finishers advanced to a second and final, competitive round. The top three then played an exhibition concert — at the opera house instead of at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Room, since the additional capacity was needed — before a winner was announced. But the event's vibe, while exacting, does not feel like something out of the movie 'Whiplash' — at least not anymore. Years ago, organizers felt the competition was getting too cutthroat, and looked to soften its edges. Now, students perform, but also jam with kids from other schools, attend clinics with professionals, and have meals where they're seated not by school, but by the instrument they play. In the hallways, members of different schools spontaneously burst into song together. 'It's like the top arts festival,' said Julius Tolentino, the jazz director at Newark Academy in Livingston, N.J., whose band won the competition in 2024. 'There's nothing that compares to this. They roll out the red carpet for the students. It's changed the way band directors all over the world deal with jazz music.' The organization's work isn't limited to the contest. It runs an annual training program for band directors and sends out professional musicians, often members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, to help guide bands that qualify for the finals. The festival also doubles as a tool for the creation of a big band canon. For 30 years, the Jazz at Lincoln Center team has created sheet music for pieces by Ellington and some of his contemporaries, like Gillespie or Count Basie or Benny Carter, and has sent it out to schools interested in competing, for free. That process is not always simple, and often involves digging through the archives at the Smithsonian to look at existing, handwritten scores and transcribing from recordings. 'There's a philosophy that jazz is a methodology, not an art form that has a canon,' said Todd Stoll, the vice president of education at Jazz at Lincoln Center. 'The historical viewpoint of this music was, I won't say ignored, but it wasn't something that there was much focus on at the university level. I went all the way through a master's degree at a major conservatory. I never played a note of Duke Ellington's music.' That would be unfathomable now, in part because of the work that Jazz at Lincoln Center has done. Mr. Marsalis bristled at the idea that Ellington was not an international star before the festival existed, but Essentially Ellington, and the work that makes it possible, may do as much as anything to ensure that his work persists. For Mr. Marsalis, who has been at the center of debates about the jazz canon for decades, this could be a victory lap. But he insists on Essentially Ellington as an example of how playing old music does not need to be a backward-looking endeavor. 'We are not cynical,' he said. 'When you're establishing a new mythology, how much time do you have to attack the old mythology? Every band that auditions for a spot in New York is a part of that new mythology, an example of how the music is not a historical document, but something that is alive as long as it is being interpreted.' The experience, however, can be intimidating until you are a part of it. When Dr. Ollie Liddell, the band director at Memphis Central High School in Memphis, first saw videos on YouTube of groups that had reached the finals of the Essentially Ellington festival, over a decade ago, he thought to himself: 'We're never going to have a band that good.' Memphis Central is a public high school, and like most public school band directors, Dr. Liddell is responsible for not just the jazz band, but the marching band and concert ensembles, too. He has to handle fund-raising and convince clinicians to come in and work with his band. None of his jazz students receive private instruction, save one, who receives lessons from a Memphis Central alumnus over Zoom. Essentially Ellington can't always be top of mind. That's not the case for many of the groups that make it to New York, with arts magnet schools and private academies offering instrument-specific instructors, and a number of students taking private lessons as well. But even without those luxuries, a resourceful director and passionate kids can still compete. The proof? Memphis Central took first place at this year's competition. It is a cliché to say that jazz is an interactive music, a conversation. But those conversations aren't confined to the stage. On Saturday, during its final performance for the judges, Memphis Central took the stage and the sound of Ellington's 'Rockabye River' came all at once. The rumble of the drum set's low tom. The shout of the horns. The growling trumpet soloist punctuating each of the written phrases. The work was brought to life and made new. A crowd filled with competitors and rivals sat with wide eyes and open mouths, with some yelping their approval. None of them, clearly, were cynical.
The Guardian
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Branford Marsalis Quartet: Belonging review – a virtuosic take on Keith Jarrett's seminal 70s album
Saxophonist extraordinaire Branford Marsalis claims his garlanded quartet is 'a chamber group rather a jazz group', by which he presumably means they are not thirsting for innovation but happy to celebrate and interpret tradition. Hence Belonging, a reprise of Keith Jarrett's groundbreaking 1974 album that is also Marsalis's debut for the Blue Note label skilfully resurrected by Don Was. When Jarrett released Belonging, Branford was a high school R&B fan, later discovering the record via the pianist here, Joey Calderazzo. For Jarrett, Belonging proved a seminal work, rescuing him from electric-era Miles for the organic sound of Jarrett's European Quartet, where Norwegian sax player Jan Garbarek starred. These were happy times, clear from the 70s band's joyous playing, most strikingly on As Long As You Know You're Living Yours, a jaunty, funk-influenced number that Donald Fagen eventually admitted he'd pinched for Steely Dan's Gaucho. It remains a towering piece, with Marsalis faithfully following Garbarek's mid-solo acrobatics, though his tone is a tad less abrasive, Calderazzo's chords less pummelling. The group explore lyrical pieces such as Blossom with equal aplomb, with Marsalis playing burnished soprano on Solstice. Jarrett, who has been left unable to perform after a stroke in 2018, will doubtless enjoy every charmed minute.
New York Times
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Branford Marsalis and Steve Lehman Rethink the Jazz Cover Album
Great jazz composers are legion. But the list of great jazz composers whose work gets played by other artists with any regularity? That's a far more exclusive club. So when a jazz musician devotes an entire record to the work of a less-celebrated figure, it reads like a deliberate, even courageous, act of advocacy. The soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy did this for Thelonious Monk in 1959, releasing 'Reflections,' the first-ever tribute album to the pianist, which paved the way for a wider engagement with Monk's sui generis songbook; likewise, in the '80s and '90s, the pianist Misha Mengelberg, the trombonist Roswell Rudd and the collective known as the Herbie Nichols Project each made strong cases on record for the work of the once obscure Nichols. Two new jazz releases find a pair of saxophonists taking similar stands. On 'Belonging,' Branford Marsalis leads his working quartet through a full-album take on Keith Jarrett's 1974 LP of the same name. And on 'The Music of Anthony Braxton,' Steve Lehman and his longtime trio mates, with the guest tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, play a live set heavy on material by Braxton, the unorthodox, genre-transcending visionary who was also Lehman's personal mentor and former collaborator. Both records showcase the potency of the material at hand while achieving a certain kind of expressive liftoff that makes them more than just rote covers. Jarrett's 'Belonging' places unusual demands on the would-be interpreter. It's an album of emotional extremes that encompasses ecstatic exuberance and prayerful yearning. It also seems almost inextricable from the idiosyncrasies of its maker, revered as an improviser but still undervalued for his prolific writing, which peaked in the '70s with bespoke works for both a stateside quartet and the European one heard on 'Belonging.' Marsalis has tackled imposing jazz masterworks before, covering the entirety of John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' in the studio and onstage in the early 2000s, but at its best, his 'Belonging' goes deeper. On the original album, the title track is a brief, reflective interlude, played as a solo-free duet between Jarrett on piano and Jan Garbarek on tenor. Marsalis takes his time with the piece, stating the theme on soprano saxophone and leaving space for the rhythm section — the pianist Joey Calderazzo, the bassist Eric Revis and the drummer Justin Faulkner — to set up a lovely rubato ballad texture. Re-entering, Marsalis starts out playing gentle, aqueous phrases, then steadily crescendoes to a piercing intensity for the final theme statement, the band swelling to match him as his tone grows ever more urgent. It's a performance that both honors and amplifies the somber beauty of the source material. 'The Windup' represents the other pole of 'Belonging.' A rollicking, acrobatically twisty theme, it suggests boogie-woogie gone prog, conjuring a mood of infectious delight. Marsalis's quartet has embraced it as a favorite in recent years, and an earlier version appeared on the band's 2019 live album, 'The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul.' Like in that performance, Faulkner is the driving force on the new studio take. Here he pushes even harder, complementing the opening piano-and-bass vamp with a busily festive beat marked by a barrage of syncopations on snare and cowbell. Later in the track, the band borrows a quirk of the original Jarrett arrangement, in which piano, bass and drums drop out before the saxophone solo, leaving Garbarek to play an unaccompanied lead-in. Marsalis and company use the moment to veer temporarily into stormy free jazz, a move that only makes their shift back into up-tempo swing for the rest of the leader's solo feel that much more exhilarating. On ''Long as You Know You're Living Yours,' meanwhile, they dig into the strutting backbeat feel of the original — cribbed by Steely Dan for the title track of 'Gaucho' — with similar gusto. The Marsalis band's readings of the more upbeat 'Belonging' tunes underscore the sense of fun inherent in those pieces, and Lehman and his bandmates likewise tease out the playfulness within Braxton's exacting compositional style. Most of the selections on 'The Music of Anthony Braxton' — recorded in 2023 at the Los Angeles bar ETA and released ahead of its namesake's 80th birthday this June — date from his mid-70s stint on Arista Records, when his highly individual approach, drawing on both the jazz and classical avant-gardes, won enthusiastic support from open-minded critics and dour pans from more myopic ones. The rendition of '23C,' one of the more striking pieces from Braxton's classic 'New York, Fall 1974' LP, is a standout. On the original, Braxton (on flute), the trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and the bassist Dave Holland align on an ingenious cyclical theme, tacking on one new phrase with each run-through, while the drummer Jerome Cooper adds fluttering texture. Here, though, the drummer Damion Reid joins Lehman, Turner and the bassist Matt Brewer in playing the written material, while stirring in bits of crisp, driving groove, adding a subtle shimmy to Braxton's staccato lines. Later, the band loops the composition's concluding phrase to create a sleek, asymmetrical pattern for the saxophonists to solo over. The overall effect is that of a hip contemporary remix. On '34A,' a piece found on the excellent, underrated 1982 Braxton effort 'Six Compositions: Quartet,' the band adds a crackling swing feel to the work's central 6/8 loop, finding a loose, jam session-style energy in the composer's raw materials. Two new Lehman originals stirred into the program reflect his own signature style, tricky yet powerfully kinetic, and show how Braxton's painstaking approach has empowered members of a younger generation (also including other former students such as the guitarist Mary Halvorson and the cornet player Taylor Ho Bynum) to hone their own unconventional aesthetics. And a closing version of Monk's 'Trinkle, Tinkle,' one of the thorniest tunes in the pianist's songbook, frames the whole program as a celebration of inspired eccentricity throughout jazz history. Much like Lacy's 'Reflections,' both 'The Music of Anthony Braxton' and Marsalis's 'Belonging' argue persuasively that the Braxton and Jarrett songbooks merit not just fresh listening but constructive engagement. Reinvention of older material is a pillar of jazz practice, nourishing the music with the wisdom and challenge of its past. These releases show that if other artists are willing to look beyond the most familiar names, the lessons are out there in abundance.
BBC News
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'I was shaped by growing up in segregation': Wynton Marsalis on how jazz connects democracy and liberation
Wynton Marsalis made history when he became the first musician to win classical and jazz Grammy Awards in the same year. He tells the BBC's Katty Kay about jazz's unique connection to liberation and how his father's relationship with music shaped his approach. Legendary musician Wynton Marsalis is no stranger to making history. But as he brings his one-of-a-kind blend of classical and jazz to audiences everywhere, he's reflecting on history, too. During an appearance on Influential with Katty Kay, Marsalis shares that every time he plays, he understands that he's bringing his family's legacy into the spotlight with him. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961, the 63-year-old star was surrounded by performers from the start. His father, Ellis Marsalis Jr, was a jazz pianist and his mother, Dolores Marsalis, a singer. "I did not want to be famous. I wanted to learn how to play. My standard was my father and all the musicians that I grew up respecting and loving," Marsalis tells Kay, between showing off his trumpet and playing her a few bars. His humility is tinged with a signature sense of humour. He tells Kay that at first he didn't want to play the instrument that would make him famous. "I did not want to play trumpet because I did not want to get that ring around my lips. I figured the girls would not kiss you." As the first musician – and still the only one – to win a Grammy Award in classical and jazz categories in the same year, Marsalis is open about the ways he jumps between genres to create something true to himself. He credits his unique blend to growing up in the American South during segregation and witnessing change firsthand. After he began to take music more seriously at the age of 12, he would go on to become the only black musician in the New Orleans Civic Orchestra, and played with the New Orleans Philharmonic. That early success was jarring to someone who saw his father struggle. While he'd played on some of the biggest stages in his hometown, Marsalis was unsure that had the chops to compete with professional musicians in the wider field. "I had to step back and recalibrate, like what am I going to be able to do? Am I going to be good enough to actually play jazz? That is what I wanted to play. I wanted to be a jazz musician, but it was so few people playing the type of jazz I wanted to play," Marsalis says. Once Marsalis joined the prestigious New York City music school Julliard aged 17, he was surrounded by a whole new group of performers – and introduced to new styles of music. As he found his footing in the musical scene, he also found a passion for social justice. He notes that being outspoken seemed to come just as naturally as the trumpet. "I was shaped by growing up in segregation and having to be integrated into schools where you were not necessarily wanted. You were not wanted," he says. "I was post-civil rights. So, I was speaking about things that people do not speak about, and I was also very serious about those things." Later, he would sign a contract with Colombia Records after shifting his focus from classical music to jazz – thanks in part to touring with Herbie Hancock and the Art Blakey band in Europe. Through it all, he felt jazz in everything he experienced. Touring, not a formal education, would be the thing to show him that his style of music and performing mattered. "Anything that has a harmonic progression and a melody, you can hear jazz in," he says. Marsalis notes that, unlike other genres, jazz makes its performers work together without any singular voice dominating. Instead of stealing the spotlight, jazz musicians must find a balance. "Sometimes, you do not like what people are doing because you do not understand what they are doing. Sometimes, you do not like what they are doing because you want to control everything that goes on. That's not what our music is. We are playing together," he says. This, too, is the throughline he sees between jazz and social justice. When everyone commits to a common cause, whether its racial equality or musical harmony, it takes leaving egos out of the equation. "Our music is serious because it liberates people. But it is very difficult to learn how to play and to play well, because it requires you to be in balance with somebody else. That is a hard thing to want to be," he says. Reflecting on what he's doing to help the musicians following in his storied footsteps, Marsalis is straightforward about his approach. He wants to be whom he hoped to have as he rose in the ranks. More like this:• Wendell Pierce on black resilience in America• Earvin 'Magic' Johnson on the 1992 Olympic Dream Team: 'It was the best moment of my life'• 'I don't open restaurants, I tell stories': Chef José Andrés on his singular approach to food "I try not to make the mistakes I feel all the musicians made towards me when I was younger," he says, of mentoring others. Jazz, Marsalis notes, is not a place for one-upmanship. "Jazz is the opposite of all that. We will elevate you. Let me share my space with you. Let me be quiet and let you talk. Let me leave space for your soul," he says. -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
