Jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis, a pianist and the father of musicians Wynton and Branford Marsalis, has died, the mayor of New Orleans says. He was 85.
FILE - This April 28, 2019 file photo shows Ellis Marsalis during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. The New Orleans Advocate says the 85-year-old Marsalis has told the Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro that he no longer wanted to play his usual Friday evening set. Instead, he'll make two monthly appearances as a “special guest" with other acts sitting in with him.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Campbell announced Marsalis’ death in a news release Wednesday night. She did not specify a cause of death. He had continued to perform regularly in New OrleansBecause Marsalis opted to stay in New Orleans for most of his career, his reputation was limited until his sons became famous and brought him the spotlight, along with new recording contracts and headliner performances on television and on tour.
Harry Connick Jr., one of Marsalis’ students at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, was a guest. He is just one of the many now-famous jazz musicians who passed through the Marsalis classrooms; others include trumpeters Nicholas Payton and Terence Blanchard, saxophonists Donald Harrison and Victor Goines, and bassist Reginald Veal.
Ornette Coleman was in town at the time, and in 1956 when Coleman headed to California, Marsalis and the others went with him, but after a few months Marsalis came back home. He told the New Orleans Times-Picayune years later, when he and Coleman were old men, that he never did figure out what a pianist could do behind the free form of Coleman’s jazz.
Marsalis got into education about the same time, teaching improvisation at Xavier University in New Orleans, and in the mid-1970s joined the faculty at the New Orleans magnet high school where he influenced a new generation of young jazz musicians. Marsalis retired from UNO in 2001, but continued to perform, particularly at Snug Harbor in New Orleans, a small jazz club that anchored the city’s contemporary jazz scene — frequently backing young musicians who had promise.
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