{"id":357208,"date":"2026-09-26T00:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T00:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357208\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T00:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T00:14:09","slug":"jazz-at-lincoln-center-to-celebrate-outgoing-artist-director-wynton-marsalis-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357208\/","title":{"rendered":"Jazz at Lincoln Center to Celebrate Outgoing Artist Director Wynton Marsalis This Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like Lincoln Center\u2019s Visionary Artist honorees before him\u2014Terence Blanchard<\/a> (2023), Rub\u00e9n Blades (2024), and Jeanine Tesori<\/a> (2025)\u2014Wynton Marsalis<\/a> has worn many hats over his extraordinary career: He\u2019s a world-renowned trumpeter, band leader, composer, educator, and founder of both Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) and the Juilliard jazz program, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this season. And he\u2019s still going strong as an advocate for jazz as a distinctly American art form.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in his DNA,\u201d says Georgina Javor, Vice President, Concerts and Touring at Jazz at Lincoln Center, who has worked closely with Marsalis for the past several years.\u201c He feels so passionately about this music, and it\u2019s so important to him that the music lives, that Duke Ellington<\/a>, Wayne Shorter, and John Coltrane, along with works by newer\u00a0composers, continue to be performed globally. He\u2019s driven by this mission.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That mission began in New Orleans, where Marsalis was born into a musical family as the second oldest of six sons. (His older brother is saxophonist Branford.) He moved to New York to attend Juilliard, then in 1987 he founded Jazz at Lincoln Center, which has since become one of the many artistic constituents on its campus. Marsalis recently announced that he will be stepping down as JALC\u2019s artistic director at the conclusion of the upcoming season, which is featuring many of his own compositions under the title Wynton: Come Home.<\/p>\n

“We are presenting an incredible overview of his composing career over the past four decades,\u201d Javor says. Those Rose Theater performances include From Cuba to the Crescent City, with selections from his works Ochas and Afro! (October 23 and24); Portraits of Bards, Titans, and Legends, which features works that honor great Americans like Walt Whitman, Mark Twain<\/a>, and Benjamin Franklin (February 5 and 6); and the celebrated 2018 oratorio The Ever Fonky Lowdown, with actor Wendell Pierce<\/a> (April 8, 9 and 10); \u201cWe\u2019ll also celebrate his many cross-cultural collaborations,\u201d Javor continues, \u201clike\u00a0The World in Swing, with masters of the flamenco and traditional Brazilian and Arab music (April 30 and May 1).\u201d<\/p>\n

Marsalis\u2019 own non-musical voice can be heard during his keynote address, An Evening with Wynton Marsalis: The Future of Jazz and Democracy (Alice Tully Hall, February 10). \u201cHis contributions as a scholar and educator are as important as his music,\u201d Javor says. \u201cYou\u2019ll get to hear from him directly his thoughts on the world, on leadership, and on arts administration. The artistic legacy of jazz is something he feels strongly about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center\u2019s Executive Vice President and Ehrenkranz Chief Artistic Officer, Wynton Marsalis is another example of an artist whose vision and impact resonate across the Lincoln Center campus. \u201cHe personifies the promise of Lincoln Center that our institutions coexist and that our artists and audiences can move between them,\u201d she explains. \u201cWe learn and grow together because we are in proximity with each other. Wynton has taken the idea of Jazz at Lincoln Center and built a worldwide foundation for jazz that cannot be shaken. The connections that he makes between genres, how he works with artists from JALC, the New York Philharmonic, and Juilliard, is a phenomenal attribute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thake also believes that coming in the year of our country\u2019s semiquincentennial, honoring Marsalis is a uniquely American story. \u201cWynton is a big believer in the American idea, and how jazz teaches us to be American,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can\u2019t untangle the stories of America without thinking of the arts in America.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For more information on this season\u2019s Wynton Marsalis programs, visit here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like Lincoln Center\u2019s Visionary Artist honorees before him\u2014Terence Blanchard (2023), Rub\u00e9n Blades (2024), and Jeanine Tesori (2025)\u2014Wynton Marsalis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-357208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}