(AP Photo/Sophia Germer, File) When asked how he could teach something as free-wheeling as jazz improvisation, Marsalis once said, "We don't teach jazz, we teach students." The love and the prayers of all of our people go out to his family, and to all of those whose lives he touched.Four of his six sons are musicians: Wynton, the trumpeter, is America’s most prominent jazz spokesman as artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. Although he owned a trumpet when he was six, he didn't practice much until he was 12.When asked about influences on his playing style, he cites In 1987, Marsalis helped start the Classical Jazz summer concert series at Lincoln Center in New York City.In December 2011, Marsalis was named cultural correspondent for Marsalis was involved in writing, arranging, and performing music for the 2019 When he met Miles Davis, one of his idols, Davis said, "So here's the police..."Marsalis responded to criticism by saying, "You can't enter a battle and expect not to get hurt. While sitting at a table with trumpeters Al Hirt, Miles Davis, and Clark Terry, his father jokingly suggested that he might as well get Wy… (AP Photo/Sophia Germer, File)NEW ORLEANS -- Ellis Marsalis, left, and his sons Branford, Wynton, and Delfeayo perform for the Ellis Marsalis Family Tribute during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on Sunday, April 28, 2019. It was there, he said, that he learned to handle all kinds of different music styles.On returning home, he worked at the Playboy Club and ventured into running his own club, which quickly went bust. Branford Marsalis is his older brother and Jason Marsalis and Delfeayo Marsalis are younger. Branford, a saxophonist, has won three Grammies, led The Tonight Show band and toured with Sting. Would you like to receive desktop browser notifications about breaking news and other major stories? Ellis III, who decided music was not his gig, is a photographer-poet in Baltimore.The Marsalis “family band” seldom played together when the boys were younger, but in 2003 toured up East in a spinoff of a family celebration that became a PBS special when the elder Marsalis retired from teaching at the University of New Orleans.Marsalis was born in New Orleans, son of the operator of a hotel where Marsalis met touring black musicians who could not stay at the segregated downtown hotels where they performed. The New Orleans Advocate says the 85-year-old Marsalis has told the Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro that he no longer wanted to play his usual Friday evening set. Marsalis got into education about the same time, teaching improvisation at Xavier University in New Orleans. Returning home, he worked at the Playboy Club and ventured into running his own club, which went bust. But when he had to feed his family, he played R&B and soul and rock ‘n’ roll on Bourbon Street," Spitzer said. It was there that he mentored such future stars as Mr. Blanchard and Mr. Connick as well as his own children.He later taught at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of New Orleans, where he served for 12 years as the founding director of its jazz studies department.Four years later, Mr. Marsalis made another New York appearance, at a next-door locale with a similar name: Carnegie Hall. He played saxophone in high school but was also playing piano by the time he went to Dillard University.Although New Orleans was steeped in traditional jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll was the new sound in the city’s studios in the 1950s, Marsalis preferred bebop and modern jazz. I'm going to play this set. Mr. Marsalis’s devotion to midcentury bebop and its offshoots had long made him something of an outsider in a city with an abiding loyalty to its early-jazz roots. He was named for jazz pianist Wynton Kelly. He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz. He often played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. He is the second of six sons born to Dolores Ferdinand Marsalis and Ellis Marsalis Jr., a pianist and music teacher. He put on the sweatshirt, blew the whistle and made these guys work," said Nick Spitzer, host of public radio’s American Routes and a Tulane University anthropology professor. After that he joined them and other musicians on mainstream labels and headlined his own releases, many full of his own compositions.He often played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. He and Delfeayo, neither of them yet 10, had gone to hear their father play at a club. "His great love was jazz a la bebop — he was a lover of Thelonious Monk and the idea that bebop was a music of freedom. He was 85. Only one man — sleeping and drunk — was in the audience for the second set. "He was like the coach of jazz.
(AP Photo/Sophia Germer, File) When asked how he could teach something as free-wheeling as jazz improvisation, Marsalis once said, "We don't teach jazz, we teach students." The love and the prayers of all of our people go out to his family, and to all of those whose lives he touched.Four of his six sons are musicians: Wynton, the trumpeter, is America’s most prominent jazz spokesman as artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. Although he owned a trumpet when he was six, he didn't practice much until he was 12.When asked about influences on his playing style, he cites In 1987, Marsalis helped start the Classical Jazz summer concert series at Lincoln Center in New York City.In December 2011, Marsalis was named cultural correspondent for Marsalis was involved in writing, arranging, and performing music for the 2019 When he met Miles Davis, one of his idols, Davis said, "So here's the police..."Marsalis responded to criticism by saying, "You can't enter a battle and expect not to get hurt. While sitting at a table with trumpeters Al Hirt, Miles Davis, and Clark Terry, his father jokingly suggested that he might as well get Wy… (AP Photo/Sophia Germer, File)NEW ORLEANS -- Ellis Marsalis, left, and his sons Branford, Wynton, and Delfeayo perform for the Ellis Marsalis Family Tribute during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on Sunday, April 28, 2019. It was there, he said, that he learned to handle all kinds of different music styles.On returning home, he worked at the Playboy Club and ventured into running his own club, which quickly went bust. Branford Marsalis is his older brother and Jason Marsalis and Delfeayo Marsalis are younger. Branford, a saxophonist, has won three Grammies, led The Tonight Show band and toured with Sting. Would you like to receive desktop browser notifications about breaking news and other major stories? Ellis III, who decided music was not his gig, is a photographer-poet in Baltimore.The Marsalis “family band” seldom played together when the boys were younger, but in 2003 toured up East in a spinoff of a family celebration that became a PBS special when the elder Marsalis retired from teaching at the University of New Orleans.Marsalis was born in New Orleans, son of the operator of a hotel where Marsalis met touring black musicians who could not stay at the segregated downtown hotels where they performed. The New Orleans Advocate says the 85-year-old Marsalis has told the Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro that he no longer wanted to play his usual Friday evening set. Marsalis got into education about the same time, teaching improvisation at Xavier University in New Orleans. Returning home, he worked at the Playboy Club and ventured into running his own club, which went bust. But when he had to feed his family, he played R&B and soul and rock ‘n’ roll on Bourbon Street," Spitzer said. It was there that he mentored such future stars as Mr. Blanchard and Mr. Connick as well as his own children.He later taught at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of New Orleans, where he served for 12 years as the founding director of its jazz studies department.Four years later, Mr. Marsalis made another New York appearance, at a next-door locale with a similar name: Carnegie Hall. He played saxophone in high school but was also playing piano by the time he went to Dillard University.Although New Orleans was steeped in traditional jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll was the new sound in the city’s studios in the 1950s, Marsalis preferred bebop and modern jazz. I'm going to play this set. Mr. Marsalis’s devotion to midcentury bebop and its offshoots had long made him something of an outsider in a city with an abiding loyalty to its early-jazz roots. He was named for jazz pianist Wynton Kelly. He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz. He often played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. He is the second of six sons born to Dolores Ferdinand Marsalis and Ellis Marsalis Jr., a pianist and music teacher. He put on the sweatshirt, blew the whistle and made these guys work," said Nick Spitzer, host of public radio’s American Routes and a Tulane University anthropology professor. After that he joined them and other musicians on mainstream labels and headlined his own releases, many full of his own compositions.He often played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. He and Delfeayo, neither of them yet 10, had gone to hear their father play at a club. "His great love was jazz a la bebop — he was a lover of Thelonious Monk and the idea that bebop was a music of freedom. He was 85. Only one man — sleeping and drunk — was in the audience for the second set. "He was like the coach of jazz.