“What is jazz? It’s a sound. It’s almost like asking a question like what is French… I remember it’s a musical language. In fact it expresses the spirit of America. It is certainly based on the experience of Afro-Americans…. You cannot distinguish, whites from blacks in this issue… it is really sensibility” Branford Marsalis said in an interview in November 1996

The composer and saxophonist Branford Marsalis was born in New Orleans on August 26^th 1960. He comes from a musical family and his first instrument was the piano at four years old, the clarinet at six and at fifteen he started playing alto saxophone and later baritone.

“When I was a kid I wasn’t a jazz person at all. When I was like 19, I went to see my brother Wynton playing with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers and I said Man I want to do this. It was revolutionary stuff. It was the sound, but, it was the idea of it, the idea of being on stage, wearing a suit, and playing in a group and being able to have …. individual expression as well as group expression and the music being the center of attention”.

At that time he was in a band with a R& B singer and he was the center of attention.

“It was the singer singing in pop music, the singers or the guitar players and everybody else is just kind of in the band. And just the idea of something as radical as the actual music being the focal point really excited me”.

Besides Charlie Parker and Cannonball Adderley who first influenced him, he admired Wayne Shorter, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Joe Henderson and John Coltrane. He collaborated with prominent musicians such as Art Blakey, Lionel Hampton and Clark Terry and later with Herbie Hancock, his younger brother Wynton as well as with Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie and Sting.

“Saxophone is the jazz instrument. Louis Armstrong played trumpet and at that time, that was the jazz instrument. But the music started to change and the saxophones became a focal point in big band swing music. But when Charlie Parker came on the scene, he made the saxophone king. And we ‘re still the Kings”.

Pioneer with many musical interests jazz, blues, funk, even classical music, Branford Marsalis has presented many personal albums, has won three Grammy awards, has given many concerts, has taught in Universities such as Michigan State, San Francisco State, Stanford, North Carolina Central.

Renata Dikeopoulou 30 October 2009