Despite the purity of his southern jazz roots, 48-year-old Branford Marsalis has extended his reach far beyond Crescent City’s native music. As the director of Jay Leno's Tonight Show band for three years and as saxophonist on Sting's tours, he has sometimes been viewed more as a pop than bop artist. This has been reinforced by his career as a composer of popular film scores and prolific recording artist of a far ranging array of jazz, funk and pop through the 1980s and well into the 1990s.  Marsalis’ jazz career took off early, when in his 20s he released Scenes in the City for Columbia Jazz (1984), yet he also found success working with The Grateful Dead, Sting, and Bruce Hornsby. He won his first Grammy (Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual or Group) in 1993 for I Heard You Twice the First Time, and another in 1994 (Best Pop Instrumental Performance) for the single, “Barcelona Mona,” recorded with Bruce Hornsby for the Barcelona Olympics. Of his 1993 trio album, Bloomington, Bill Kohlhasse (Los Angeles Times) praised it as “revealing and beautiful in ways only the best improvisational music can be.” Recording in the mid-90s under the alias “Buckshot LeFonque,” Marsalis fused jazz and hip-hop, again proving to be a modern pioneer not easily classified by genre. In 1995 he was nominated for another Grammy (Best Pop Instrumental Performance) for his rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” with (again) Bruce Hornsby, on the soundtrack of Ken Burns’ PBS series, Baseball. He released another jazz album, Dark Keys (1996), as well as a second Buckshot album, Music Evolution, in 1997. 

In 2000, Marsalis and his touring quartet released what many considered to be his best recording yet, Contemporary Jazz, winner of the Grammy Award for the year’s Best Jazz Instrumental Album; Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune noted that Marsalis had “achieved a new level of emotional intensity and instrumental brilliance.” Indeed, this recording seemed to usher in a new era of commitment to jazz and an epiphany of sorts for Marsalis, as his subsequent projects reflect a musician who has truly found his jazz calling.

One sure sign of a new sense of direction is Branford Marsalis’ new label, Marsalis Music, giving him ultimate artistic control and the opportunity to explore new musical galaxies as well as preserve jazz traditions. His inaugural release, Footsteps of Our Fathers (2002), is an ambitious tribute to the legends of modern saxophone (Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins), highlighted by the quartet’s performance of the full A Love Supreme suite, which was later recorded live at the Bottom Line in Amsterdam for DVD (2004). Of Footsteps, Doug Collette (All About Music) writes, “Notwithstanding its solemn tone, Marsalis and his quartet plunge into the music with an abandon that displays reverence for the authors and their music but a full-bodied confidence in their own abilities.” Marsalis has furthered his career as a producer, with artists such as Dávid Sanchez (whose albums Obsesión and Melaza were Grammy nominees for Best Latin Jazz Performance), Frank McComb, and Joey Calderazzo. In 2003, Marsalis released Romare Bearden Revisited, a series of vignettes inspired by Bearden’s paintings. Noted critic Bob Blumenthal, “The result is a rollicking session full of the jubilance of New Orleans jazz, climaxing with the curveball of guitarist Doug Wamble slippin’ and slidin’ on bottleneck guitar.”

With the release of Eternal in 2004, Branford Marsalis extended his reach into the realm of modern balladry, the result worthy of inclusion on many “Best of the Year” lists.  Nominated for a Grammy and five Jazz Journalist Association awards, Eternal covered “lots of ground stylistically, from near-retro sounds to more floating, contemporary playing…always strong while conveying sensitivity and vulnerability” (Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen).  In fall 2006, the quartet released, Braggtown, covering a wide swath of music from a 17th Century English composer, an Indian Warrior and a Japanese horror film.

In addition to production and performance, Branford Marsalis, like brother Wynton, is devoting considerable energy to jazz education. The members of his quartet were recently named Artists in Residence at North Carolina Central University, and Branford has previously been involved with programs at Michigan State University and San Francisco State University. He also presents concerts and jam sessions to college and high school students through his Marsalis Jams program.

The music of Heitor Villa-Lobos meshes Afro-Brazilian folk traditions (the roots of 1950s bossa nova) and the influences of classical composers such as Stravinsky, Bach, and Milhaud.The first movement of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5 has long attracted the attention of pop and jazz artists, including Branford Marsalis. With Marsalis Brasilianos, the saxophonist has toured with the acclaimed Filharmonia Brasileira, founded in 1995 by Brazilian conductor Gil Jardim. Among their projects is Villa-Lobos in Paris, a recording that reconstructs the first concert Heitor Villa- Lobos held in Paris in 1924. Jardim has appeared as guest conductor with such ensembles as the Brooklyn Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Mexico’s Camerata Mexicana. 

The program at Orchestra Hall is expected to include a number of compositions by Villa-Lobos, including the Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5 and No. 9 and Fantasia for Saxophone, as well as works by Milhaud (La Creation du Monde, Scaramouche) and Nascimento (Vera Cruz). 

Minnesota Orchestra Hall is located at 1111 Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. Tickets are $25-$65; www.minnesotaorchestra.com or 612-371-5656.