A virtuoso jazz saxophonist with a wry improvisational sense, Branford Marsalis is a boundary-pushing performer who has explored an array of styles from post-bop and traditional jazz to classical, funk, hip-hop, and rock. Emerging in the 1980s to widespread acclaim in the jazz world, he soon branched out, playing with Sting, Béla Fleck, Bruce Hornsby, as well as his own genre-bending side project Buckshot LeFonque. He brings the same adventurous, exploratory approach to his recordings, investigating aspects of the blues on 1992's Grammy-winning I Heard You Twice the First Time, leading his harmonically sophisticated quartet on 2000's Grammy-winning Contemporary Jazz, and collaborating with vocalist Kurt Elling for 2016's poetically atmospheric Upward Spiral. Marsalis hit the Top Five of the jazz charts with 2019's The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul, scored the 2020 biopic Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and continued his classical explorations on 2023's Sound of the Sun.
Blue Gardenia
Englishman In New York
Practical Arrangement
Desert Rose
The Branford Marsalis Quartet received a Grammy Award in 2001 for their album Contemporary Jazz.
In September 2006, Branford Marsalis was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. During his acceptance ceremony, he was honored with a tribute performance featuring music throughout his career.
Marsalis won the 2010 Drama Desk Award in the category "Outstanding Music in a Play" and was also nominated for a 2010 Tony Award in the category of "Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre" for his participation in the Broadway revival of August Wilson's Fences.
Marsalis, with his father and brothers, were group recipients of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award.
In May 2012, he received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In June 2012, Marsalis, along with friend and fellow New Orleans native Harry Connick, Jr., received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by the Jefferson Awards for Public Service, for their work in the Musicians' Village of New Orleans.
On March 26, 2013, he received the degree of Doctor of Arts Leadership, honoris causa from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.
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