Profile: Wynton Marsalis
Pulitzer Prize for Music

"You have the conception of New Orleans jazz: group improvisation, cooperative ensemble playing, which functions exactly like a democracy. Which means each person has the right to play what they want to play, but the responsibility to play something that makes everybody else sound good. So the way the horns relate to the rhythm section is like a musical example of how a democracy works."

The arrival of Wynton Marsalis on the music scene in 1982 could not have been more unexpected. Barely out of his teens, this trumpet prodigy recorded jazz and classical music with seemingly equal facility. Even more startling was his dedication to a self-defined mission to restore jazz music to a central place in American life, and with it, the values he believes jazz embodies: freedom and discipline, romance and responsibility, pride and respect for both the African and the European components of our musical heritage.

It is highly appropriate that Wynton Marsalis is a son of New Orleans, the city where jazz was born. His father Ellis and brothers Branford and Delfeo are also musicians, but Wynton is the first to point out that his command of jazz has been hard-won, that the public was not always receptive to his brand of jazz orthodoxy. Outspoken, sometimes abrasive, Wynton Marsalis almost single-handedly initiated a revival of interest in mainstream jazz tradition among young musicians. In 1997 he became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize in music, for his epic oratorio on the subject of slavery, Blood on the Fields. Marsalis continues to compose, to tour, and to bring his message to a new generation as Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and leader of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.