Branford Marsalis News

Branford Marsalis headlines Haiti jazz festival

Publication: The Miami Herald
Author: Jacqueline Charles
Date: January 17, 2013

Like New Orleans, Haiti has experienced great suffering - poverty, disease, natural disaster.

So perhaps it’s only fitting that a week after an unlucky Haiti marked the third anniversary of its cataclysmic Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, it is one of New Orleans’ great musical sons - jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis - who will open this year’s Port-au-Prince International Jazz Festival.

“Being from New Orleans, Haiti has a kind of mythic status there,” said Marsalis, 52, who performs Friday in Jacmel at the Tourism Port and again Saturday in Port-au-Prince at a former sugar cane plantation-turned outdoor concert venue, Parc Historique de la Canne a Sucre.

“We have a lot of similar traditions; relationships with Vodou, with music and with rhythm that’s very, very different from all of the states in the United States,” he said. Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on January 18th, 2013 — 10:47am

iTunes Best of 2012

We are so pleased to announce that iTunes picked the Branford Marsalis Quartet’s Four MFs Playin’ Tunes as the Best Instrumental Jazz Album of 2012! Find Four MFs and other iTunes Best of 2012 picks here.

Submitted by Bobby on December 17th, 2012 — 03:21pm

Branford Marsalis: Confident MF Playin’ Tunes

Publication: All About Jazz
Author: R.J. DeLuke
Date: December 10, 2012

Musicians evolve, and so do bands, if they’re allowed to stay together long enough to develop their musical relationships—that certain chemistry. Such is the case with Branford Marsalis, the outstanding saxophonist who has been through so much in his storied career. It’s also the case with his band, which he has kept together, with few personnel changes, for more than a decade. They are a tight unit that continues to ripen. Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on December 10th, 2012 — 10:07am

Harry Connick Jr., Branford Marsalis lead tribute to the late Bob French

Publication: The Times-Picayune
Author: Keith Spera
Date: December 5, 2012

Among other, sometimes less flattering designations, Bob French was considered the unofficial mayor of the Musicians’ Village. In November, he also became the first of its residents to die.

On the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 4, Harry Connick Jr., Branford Marsalis and their manager, Ann Marie Wilkins, the trio who championed the construction of the Musicians’ Village after Hurricane Katrina, hosted a private memorial concert for French, the longtime leader and drummer of the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band and an especially colorful WWOZ-FM deejay.

Over the decades, French mentored scores of young musicians, including Connick and Marsalis. After their success and fame had far surpassed that of their mentor, they returned the favor. Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on December 6th, 2012 — 10:57am

Branford Marsalis Quartet: Four MFs Playin' Tunes (Marsalis Music)

Publication: Jazziz
Author: Josef Woodard
Date: November 29, 2012

Four MFs Playin’ Tunes sports a fitting package and moniker. Each member of the Branford Marsalis Quartet — tenor/soprano saxophonist Marsalis, pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner — is featured on a single panel of the insert, while the others appear in blurred focus behind him. And the players more than live up to the designation of mother****ers — a term of highest praise in this context.

Marsalis is a wise and humble leader, who willingly shares the spotlight. Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on December 5th, 2012 — 10:16am