Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis was born in 1961 in New Orleans, and was fed the jazz diet from an early age. He got his first trumpet at age six, from jazz trumpeter Al Hirt, but started playing six years later. Wynton Marsalis then had to choose between classical music and jazz, and chose the latter after touring with Art Blakey for a while. Yet somehow, classical music kept being a part of his repertoire, leading to collaborations such as this.
Nowadays, Marsalis heads the Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. He created it as well, when he organised a concert series in the Summer. That led to founding of a department within the Lincoln Center, which was later to become a separate institute.
Marsalis is very vocal about his opinions on jazz. His view on jazz history excludes more recent developments like the 70s avant-garde and fusion, and tends to focus on what is called Straight-ahead jazz. Straight-ahead jazz was born in bop, and focuses on the use of acoustic instruments and a walking bass (a 4/4 rhythm with notes on each beat). His strong opinion have led him to be severely criticised, and led Miles Davis to comment on his arrival: “So here’s the police…“. It doesn’t stop him, he once said that losing the freedom to criticise is “to accept mob rule, it is a step back towards slavery.“
This is no jazz, but certainly jazz influenced classical music. I like it, it is worth a listen.