The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet's performance of The Democracy! Suite aims to entertain, inspire, and uplift audiences with the full vigor, vision, and depth of America’s music.

Led by trumpeter/composer Wynton Marsalis and featuring seven of jazz's finest soloists, the concert's unique repertoire celebrates jazz's embodiment of freedom and democracy.

The evening will feature the premiere of The Democracy! Suite, a new Marsalis composition written during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis as a response to the political, social, and economic struggles facing our nation. The Democracy! Suite is a swinging and stimulating instrumental rumination on the issues that have recently dominated our lives as well as the beauty that could emerge from a collective effort to create a better future.

This concert was filmed on September 27, 2020 at Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City in accordance with the New York State Department of Health Interim Guidance on Media Production.

The post-concert Q&A with Wynton Marsalis will be moderated by Jeff Hellmer, UT Austin Director of Jazz Studies.

Ticketholders will have viewing access to the concert and discussion recording for 72 hours following the broadcast. 

View event program.

Free Tickets for UT Students
Enter your UT EID here for your free tickets.  

ARTICLES
Wynton Marsalis tells how he's encouraging his students to join the conversation on civil rights - MSNBC

ABOUT JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER
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, television broadcasts, recordings, publications, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival, a band director academy, jazz appreciation curricula for students, music publishing, children’s concerts and classes, lectures, adult education courses, student and educator workshops, a record label, and interactive websites. Under the leadership of Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis, Chairman Robert J. Appel, and Executive Director Greg Scholl, Jazz at Lincoln Center produces thousands of events each season in its home in New York City, Frederick P. Rose Hall, and around the world.

ABOUT WYNTON MARSALIS
Wynton Marsalis (Trumpet) is the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and a world-renowned trumpeter and composer. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961, Marsalis began his classical training on trumpet at age 12, entered The Juilliard School at age 17, and then joined Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He made his recording debut as a leader in 1982, and has since recorded more than 60 jazz and classical recordings, which have won him nine Grammy Awards. In 1983 he became the first and only artist to win both classical and jazz Grammys in the same year and repeated this feat in 1984. Marsalis is also an internationally respected teacher and spokesman for music education, and has received honorary doctorates from dozens of U.S. universities and colleges. He has written six books; his most recent are Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!, illustrated by Paul Rogers and published by Candlewick Press in 2012, and Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life with Geoffrey C. Ward, published by Random House in 2008. In 1997 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 2001 he was appointed Messenger of Peace by Mr. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and he has also been designated cultural ambassador to the United States of America by the U.S. State Department through their CultureConnect program. Marsalis was instrumental in the Higher Ground Hurricane Relief concert, produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center. The event raised more than $3 million for the Higher Ground Relief Fund to benefit the musicians, music industry-related enterprises, and other individuals and entities from the areas in Greater New Orleans who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Marsalis helped lead the effort to construct Jazz at Lincoln Center’s home—Frederick P. Rose Hall—the first education, performance, and broadcast facility devoted to jazz, which opened in October 2004.