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Marsalis Quartet at WCU
Written By: - NONE - | Issue: 2016/09 - September
Western Carolina University’s Friends of the Arts will present an afternoon of outstanding jazz starring the Branford Marsalis Quartet with special guest Kurt Elling at 3:00 P.M. Sunday, October 2.
The show will be presented on WCU’s campus at the John W. Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center.
Marsalis gained critical acclaim as a saxophonist early in his career, and since then has refined and expanded his talents as a musician, composer, bandleader and educator. He has received numerous prestigious honors, including three Grammys and (together with his father and brothers) a citation as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.
A native of New Orleans, Marsalis began performing with local bands as a teenager and formed his own quartet in 1986. The Branford Marsalis Quartet has long been recognized as the standard to which other jazz ensembles are measured.
The quartet will be joined by guest-vocalist Kurt Elling in a singular collaboration of musical forces. Elling is among the world’s foremost jazz vocalists and won the DownBeat Critics Poll for 14 consecutive years. He was named “Male Singer of the Year” by the Jazz Journalist Association eight times in that same span.
Energized by the artistic promise of this collaboration, the band members have all contributed arrangements to their new album, “Upward Spiral,” which looks beyond the Great American Songbook. Although following the format of a standard jazz quartet with vocals, the collaboration between jazz’s most intense band and one of jazz’s foremost singers should prove to be anything but standard.
Tickets go on sale on September 6. For more information, visit bardoartscenter.wcu.edu or call (828) 227-2479. Ticket prices are $35 orchestra, $30 club, and
$25 balcony.
The concert is part of the 2016-2017 membership campaign for the WCU Friends of the Arts. The FOA organization provides scholarship and programming support to the College of Fine and Performing Arts.
