WyntonMarsalis

Wynton Marsalis was born in New Orleans in 1961, the son of pianist Ellis Marsalis, into one of the city's most musical families. He showed prodigious gifts from childhood — by his teens he was performing with the New Orleans Philharmonic and the New Orleans Symphony as well as in jazz contexts, a dual mastery of classical and jazz that would define his career.

He moved to New York in 1979 to attend Juilliard and quickly became the most talked-about young musician in jazz, signing with Columbia Records at 19 and releasing his debut album to widespread acclaim. In 1983 he became the first musician to win Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical albums in the same year.

As the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which he helped found in 1987, Marsalis built the most important institutional home for jazz in the world. Under his leadership, Jazz at Lincoln Center became a full-scale performing arts organization with its own concert hall — Frederick P. Rose Hall — in the Time Warner Center.

His 1997 oratorio Blood on the Fields, a meditation on slavery and freedom, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music — the first time a jazz composition received the award. He remains the central figure in American jazz, combining performing excellence with advocacy, education, and institution-building.