The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO), comprising 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players today, has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center resident orchestra since 1988. Featured in all aspects of Jazz at Lincoln Center's programming, this remarkably versatile orchestra performs and leads educational events in New York, across the U.S. and around the globe; in concert halls; dance venues; jazz clubs; public parks; and with symphony orchestras; ballet troupes; local students; and an ever-expanding roster of guest artists.

Wynton Marsalis (Music Director, Trumpet) is the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961, Mr. Marsalis began his classical training on trumpet at age 12 and soon began playing in local bands of diverse genres. He entered The Juilliard School at age 17 and joined Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Mr. Marsalis made his recording debut as a leader in 1982, and has since recorded more than 70 jazz and classical albums which have garnered him nine GRAMMY® Awards. In 1983, he became the first and only artist to win both classical and jazz GRAMMY® s in the same year; he repeated this feat in 1984.

Mr. Marsalis' rich body of compositions includes Sweet Release; Jazz: Six Syncopated Movements; Jump Start and Jazz; Citi Movement/Griot New York; At the Octoroon Balls; In This House, On This Morning; and Big Train. In 1997, Mr. Marsalis became the first jazz artist to be awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in music for his oratorio Blood on the Fields, which was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center. In 1999, he released eight new recordings in his unprecedented Swinging into the 21st series, and premiered several new compositions, including the ballet Them Twos, for a 1999 collaboration with the New York City Ballet. That same year, he premiered the monumental work All Rise, commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic along with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Morgan State University Choir. In 2004, he released The Magic Hour, his first of six albums on Blue Note records. He followed up his Blue Note debut with Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, the companion soundtrack recording to Ken Burns' PBS documentary of the great African-American boxer. To mark the 200th Anniversary of Harlem’s historical Abyssinian Baptist Church in 2008, Mr. Marsalis composed a full mass for choir and jazz orchestra. Mr. Marsalis composed his second symphony, Blues Symphony, which was premiered in 2009 by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2010.

Jazz at Lincoln Center is dedicated to inspiring and growing audiences for jazz. With the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and a comprehensive array of guest artists, Jazz at Lincoln Center advances a unique vision for the continued development of the art of jazz by producing a year-round schedule of performance, education, and broadcast events for audiences of all ages. These productions include concerts, national and international tours, residencies, weekly national radio programs, recordings, publications, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival, a band director academy, jazz appreciation curriculum for students, music publishing, children’s concerts, lectures, adult education courses, student and educator workshops, and interactive websites. 

Alixandra Porembski, English Language Annotator