Renowned Jazz Artist Wynton Marsalis to Perform at UT Tyler


	Office of News and Information January 22, 2002

Renowned Jazz Artist Wynton Marsalis to Perform at UT Tyler

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will bring its United in Swing 2001-02 Tour to The University of Texas at Tyler's R. Don Cowan Fine and Performing Arts Center, Susan Thomae-Morphew, Cowan Center director, has announced.

The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1.

The tour is sponsored by Philip Morris Companies, Inc. and the UT Tyler performance is sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. A.W. Riter Jr.

Tickets are $25, $35 and $45 and are available at the UT Tyler Cowan Center box office. Box office hours are 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. the night of the performance.

Free tickets are available to students. UT Tyler faculty and staff are eligible for a discount of 15 percent off individual tickets. A discount of 10 percent off individual tickets is available to University of Texas Health Center at Tyler faculty and staff.

Jazz at Lincoln Center is the world's largest not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to jazz. The Lincoln Jazz Center Orchestra, composed of 15 jazz soloists and ensemble players, has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center's resident orchestra for 10 years. The LCJO performs and leads educational events in New York, across the United States and around the world.

Wynton Marsalis, an accomplished and acclaimed jazz artist and composer, as well as a distinguished classical musician, serves as artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Born in New Orleans, Marsalis began his classical training on trumpet at age 12 and gained experience as a young musician in local marching bands, jazz and funk bands and classical youth orchestras.

He entered The Julliard School in 1979 at 17 and soon became recognized as the most impressive trumpeter at the prestigious conservatory. That year he also joined Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, the acclaimed band in which generations of emerging jazz artists honed their craft.

Marsalis made his recording debut as a leader in 1982, and over the past 17 years has completed more than 30 jazz and classical recordings, which have won him nine Grammy Awards.
In 1983, he became the first artist to win both classical and jazz Grammys in the same year and repeated the feat in 1984. His body of compositions includes "Sweet Release," "Jazz: Six Syncopated Movements," "Jump Start," "Citi Movement/Griot New York" and "In This House, On This Morning."

Marsalis also is the first jazz artist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music for his oratorio "Blood on the Fields," which was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center.

In 1999 he released eight new recordings in his Swinging into the 21st Century series and premiered several new compositions, including the ballet "Them Twos" for a June 1999 collaboration with the New York City Ballet and the monumental work "All Rise," commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic along with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and Morgan State University Choir.

An internationally respected teacher and spokesman for music education, Marsalis has received honorary doctorates from numerous colleges and universities throughout the country. He is the author of two books and in March 2001 was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

For ticket reservations, call the Cowan Center box office at (903) 566-7424.

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Contact person: Emily Battle, (903) 565-5604