When it comes to the life and legacy of Louis Armstrong, Wynton Marsalis is a natural expert. A Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader, Marsalis is Jazz at Lincoln Center’s longtime artistic director and president of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation.
He’s also the son of Ellis Marsalis Jr., an influential jazz pianist and educator, who taught Marsalis about the jazz forefather from a young age. By 18, Marsalis recognized Armstrong as the “Shakespeare” of trumpet players. As he’s grown, his reverence for Satchmo’s musical approach and “basic human goodness” has only deepened.
“He’s a genius,” Marsalis said. “He's the ultimate Horatio Alger story, like a person who really grew up with absolutely nothing and rose to be the most popular person in the world just through the strength and delivery of his message. And that message was the timeless message of: We are all connected in some way, and our mandate is to love one another.”
In late May, Marsalis will be in the Seattle area to support two screenings of the silent film Louis, a fictionalized retelling of Armstrong’s childhood written and directed by Dan Pritzker. Marsalis, who put together the music for Louis, will perform his score live with classical pianist Cecile Licad and a jazz orchestra. The screenings will take place at Port Townsend’s McCurdy Pavillion on May 27 and Seattle’s Paramount Theater on May 28. Notably, these appearances mark the first time in 23 years he’s come to the area without the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
“We did a whole tour on the East Coast and [Pritzker] felt like, ‘Hey, it's been a while. Let's see if we can put together a tour on the West Coast and people can see the film live,’” Marsalis told KNKX.
An immersive homage to Pops
Louis, which was shot by the late, Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and originally released in 2010, is set amongst the Storyville brothels, alleys, and cemeteries of early 20th century New Orleans.
The energetic film follows a young Louis and his enthusiasm for the trumpet, which gets him into questionable, often comical, circumstances, particularly after he meets a young single mother and her baby. Along the way, Pritzker highlights additional New Orleans’ cultural icons, including cornetist Buddy Bolden, and classical composer and pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
When Pritzker approached Marsalis to do the score for the film, Marsalis was immediately impressed by the project, which conveys a deep understanding and respect for New Orleans’ cultural history and the roots of jazz.
“I just read the script that he had and when I started to hear about Gottschalk and the stuff he was saying about the music, I mean, when do you ever hear those kinds of things? Neither before or since have I met with a person who talked about the things that are in the film,” Marsalis said.
Marsalis’ score for Louis oscillates between the music of Gottschalk, which Marsalis describes as “Liszt and Chopin mixed with the Caribbean,” and his own spirited original compositions performed by a jazz orchestra. His compositions draw on New Orleans cultural elements like the music of Jelly Roll Morton, a local great regarded as the first true jazz composer; the banjo, a prominent instrument brought over by enslaved Africans; and the bamboula dance, a foundational rhythm that suffuses the city.
“It’s just an interesting intersection of music from that time and music that I had written in our time,” Marsalis said.
Lending Centrum a hand
The show on the Olympic Peninsula is a special one. After the screening and live performance, Marsalis will take the stage at McCurdy Pavilion as the featured artist for the interdisciplinary arts nonprofit Centrum’s Benefit Concert & Gala.
Each year, Centrum provides over $150,000 in scholarships for artists of all ages so they can access Centrum’s programs, including the lauded Jazz Port Townsend workshop, with reduced tuition. This annual event is the single most important source of scholarship funds. For Marsalis, who’s dedicated much his career to jazz education, mentorship, and community work, supporting this effort is a no-brainer.
“I’m in favor of any organizations when they have an impact on the community,” he said, later adding that Centrum’s Jazz Port Townsend creates an environment for learning jazz that is “life changing” for many kids.
Marsalis would know. Many of the kids who attend Jazz Port Townsend are the same ones who participate in the jazz programs at Garfield, Roosevelt, and other local high schools. For more than twenty years, the jazz bands from our region have dominated Jazz at Lincoln Center’s prestigious Essentially Ellington high school band competition.
“My father was a teacher and he was always talking about the music and showing a certain type of love and respect for the creativity of younger people. That's what I believe in,” Marsalis said.
Jazz is democracy
At the same time, it’s no secret to Marsalis that there are many forces at play today that seek to undermine jazz education as well as the values jazz stands for.
Over the last few years, issues like COVID recovery, state budget deficits, music teacher workforce issues, lack of advocacy, and the perception that music is non-essential learning, have led K-12 schools across the country — including in the Seattle area — to cut their music program budgets and eliminate jazz programs. But Marsalis isn’t balking, and he asserts that parents, students, and community members who care about music education shouldn’t either.
“Agitate, agitate, agitate. You, your parents and everybody has to say, ‘This is important to us. Let's make this happen.’ And you can only do that with agitation,” Marsalis said.
Marsalis believes that protecting access to jazz education is about more than passing down the wisdom of legends like Louis Armstrong, it’s also about safeguarding our democracy. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission statement reflects this value, stating that through its encouragement of individual expression, finding common ground with others, and resilience in the face of adversity, jazz is “a metaphor for democracy.”
At a time when some experts say U.S. democracy is in decline, Marsalis says uplifting this American music and legacy—through his work at Lincoln Center, and through projects like Louis—matters more than ever.
“The fact that we’re in trouble...part of the reason is because we don’t listen to jazz,” he said. “We listen to mainly commercial products, and those products are not designed to teach you anything mythical about America. It's just a hustle.”
Luckily, locals get two chances to meaningfully engage with jazz music and history when Marsalis is in town with Louis. And afterwards, you might just bump into him at one of his favorite Seattle pitstops—the Owl N’ Thistle.
“I love it there,” he said. “It's a soulful place.”
