TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102290/1022440.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 30.8 KB | 626 lines

                                                                                MUSIC, Page 64

COVER STORY

Horns of Plenty


At 29, New Orleans-born trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is inspiring
a youthful renaissance of America's greatest musical tradition

By THOMAS SANCTON -- With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York


    Miles Davis is onstage, but the young man in the dark blue
Versace jacket couldn't care less. He is concentrating on the
one thing other than a trumpet mouthpiece that is capable of
riveting his attention to the point of near obsession: a
basketball hoop. For some reason, there is a basket in the open
backstage area of New York's Jones Beach Theater, and Wynton
Marsalis is pumping balls into the net from every angle.
Suddenly, he dribbles out 30 ft. from the goal and announces,
"I bet $100 I can sink one from here." A stagehand snaps up the
wager. Marsalis flexes his knees, rises up on his toes and
sends the ball arcing through the misty night sky. Swish! Amid
scattered applause and shouts of "Aw right!" from fellow
musicians, a voice calls out, "Wynton, you are one competitive
dude!" The young man grins. "No, I'm not competitive," he says
in his soft-spoken New Orleans accent. "I just like to play."

    Good thing Marsalis is not competitive. Otherwise, God help
the competition. From the time he first appeared on a public
concert stage with the New Orleans Philharmonic at age 14,
Marsalis has been blowing away would-be rivals and leaving
music professionals flap-jawed at his technical virtuosity. In
1984 he burst into national prominence by winning Grammys in
both the classical and jazz categories, the first of eight such
awards he has collected. The unmistakable sound of his horn,
whose fat, breathy tone can sing, shout, growl and whisper like
a human voice, has thrilled audiences from New York City to
London to Tokyo. He has appeared on TV shows ranging from Johnny
Carson's to Sesame Street. And he is now breaking into movies
with the release next week of Tune in Tomorrow, starring Peter
Falk and Barbara Hershey, for which he wrote the score and in
which he played a cameo role. In short, in the 11 years since
he launched his professional career, Marsalis, who turns 29
this week, has become a full-fledged superstar.

    But the most significant thing about Marsalis' career is not
his personal success. It is the fact that, largely under his
influence, a jazz renaissance is flowering on what was once
barren soil. Straight-ahead jazz music almost died in the 1970s
as record companies embraced the electronically enhanced
jazz-pop amalgam known as fusion. Now a whole generation of
prodigiously talented young musicians is going back to the
roots, using acoustic instruments, playing recognizable tunes
and studying the styles of earlier jazzmen, from King Oliver
and Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and John
Coltrane. Moreover, with major record labels rushing to sign
them up, many of these so-called neotraditionalists are
starting to enjoy commercial success, and some are on the road
to real wealth.

    Among these budding stars are trumpeters Terence Blanchard,
28, Roy Hargrove, 21, Philip Harper, 24, and Marlon Jordan, 20;
pianists Marcus Roberts, 26, Geoff Keezer, 19, and Benny Green,
27; saxophonists Branford Marsalis, 30, Christopher Hollyday,
20, and Vincent Herring, 25; guitarists Mark Whitfield, 24, and
Howard Alden, 31; drummer Winard Harper, 28; and organist Joey
De Francesco, 19. At the superstar end of the scale, of course,
sits young Harry Connick Jr., 23, the slicked-back New
Orleans-born entertainer who started out as a jazz-piano player
but has crossed over into show business as a Sinatra-style
crooner and bandleader.

    What all of these musicians have in common is that, almost
to a man, they are passing through career doors that were
opened by the success of Wynton Marsalis. "Young men can now
make a living playing straight-ahead jazz, and Wynton is
responsible for that being possible," says Dan Morgenstern,
director of the Institute of Jazz Studies of Rutgers
University. Says George Butler, the executive producer at
Columbia Records who signed both Marsalis and Connick: "Wynton
has played a major role in the popularity of this music today.
This is probably the most propitious time for this music since
the '50s and early '60s."

    Butler has been on the cutting edge of the new jazz age. But
with Marsalis' success, other major labels have joined what
amounts to a feeding frenzy on young talent. Although they had
virtually abandoned straight-ahead jazz by the early '80s, most
major record companies have now established active jazz
divisions. Many of them have also begun digging into their
vaults and reissuing hundreds of classic jazz recordings.

    Thus not only are the companies making money on jazz but the
music is reaching a younger, far larger audience than ever
before. At the same time, public interest in the music is being
fed by the spread of jazz-education programs, the airing of
jazz shows on PBS and some cable networks, and a spate of
feature films glorifying the jazz mystique ('Round Midnight,
Bird, Mo' Better Blues). As a result, people are beginning to
get the message that jazz is not just another style of popular
music but a major American cultural achievement and a heritage
that must not be lost.

    Preaching that message has been Marsalis' burning mission
throughout his career. On talk shows, in interviews, at
schoolroom seminars, he tirelessly proclaims the "majesty" of
the jazz tradition and inveighs against those who, in his view,
are selling it out to the forces of "commercialism." His
particular bete noire has been his early idol Miles Davis, whom
Marsalis once accused of being "corrupted" by his move into
fusion, sparking a bitter public feud between the two men.

    Such outspokenness has led some observers, like jazz critic
Leonard Feather, to feel that "Wynton talks a bit too much."
Even Marsalis admits that the shoot-from-the-lip style of his
early years went too far at times: "I was like 19 or something,
man -- you know, wild. I didn't care." He has since become a
less strident and far more articulate advocate for the cause.
Says pianist and composer Billy Taylor, 69: "Wynton is the most
important young spokesman for the music today. His opinions are
well founded. Some people earlier took umbrage at what he said,
but the important thing is that he could back it up with his
horn."

    Marsalis' roots, like those of jazz, go back to the steamy,
sensual city of his birth. Scholars bicker over exactly where
and when jazz was born, but there is no doubt that its first
identifiable players -- like the legendary trumpeter Buddy
Bolden -- appeared in the dance halls, honky-tonks and
bordellos of New Orleans around the turn of the century. In the
hands of such men as King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll
Morton and Sidney Bechet, the story goes, the music thrived
until the closing of the red-light district in 1917 sent many
of the Crescent City's best players up the Mississippi in
search of work. There they gave birth to the brash, vibrant
Chicago sound, which helped lay the groundwork for what would
eventually become the swing style that reigned during the Big
Band era.

    The great divide in American jazz took place after World War
II, with the emergence of the bebop movement, spearheaded by
Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie ("Bird") Parker. By the '60s, bebop
had largely given way to experimental avant-garde styles. When
fusion took over in the '70s -- although some musicians were
still playing earlier styles -- many jazz fans began to bemoan
the death of a great American tradition.

    Back in New Orleans, however, the purer jazz forms had
refused to die. During the '60s, some of Louis Armstrong's
aging contemporaries launched a "revival" of the old style,
centered mainly around Preservation Hall, a former French
Quarter art gallery where the musicians initially played for
tips. At about the same time, a group of younger, more modern
musicians came of age. Among them was a gifted pianist and
teacher named Ellis Marsalis.

    In 1974 he helped found a jazz program for the fledgling New
Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, a part-time public high
school for students pursuing artistic careers. During his 12
years there, the elder Marsalis turned NOCCA into a fertile
breeding ground for future jazz stars. Like a Renaissance
master turning out a whole school of fine painters, he trained
a virtual Who's Who of the younger generation: Harry Connick
Jr., Terence Blanchard, Marlon Jordan, trumpeter Nicholas
Payton, saxman Donald Harrison and flutist Kent Jordan, to name
a few. But the most remarkable crop of Marsalis pupils was his
own sons: Branford, Wynton, trombonist Delfeayo, 25, and
drummer Jason, 13. (Another son, Ellis III, 26, is a computer
consultant in Baltimore; Mboya, 20, is autistic and lives at
home with his parents.)

    Sitting in an armchair in the green-carpeted living room of
his modest wood-frame house, Ellis, 55, sees nothing unusual
about the way he brought up his boys. He never urged them to
become musicians, he says, but made sure they were exposed to
music and got top-level training once they showed an interest.
"It wasn't any messianic thing. They had lots of teachers."

    The one who really pushed the boys to succeed was their
mother Dolores, 53, a handsome, strong-willed woman whose
strict Roman Catholic education gave her a sense of order that
she tried to impart to her children. "It was very important for
me," she says, "that they would have some aesthetic thing that
they could express themselves through."

    A close, almost symbiotic relationship between Wynton and
Branford marked their childhood and continued into their young
manhood. Wynton, extraordinarily disciplined and driven by an
insatiable desire to excel, was a straight-A student who
starred in Little League baseball, practiced his trumpet three
hours a day and won every music competition he ever entered.
Branford, older by 13 months, was an average student, a
self-described "spaz" in sports and a naturally talented
musician who hated to practice. Yet both brothers deny that
there was any rivalry between them. "Our personalities were
formed to each other," says Wynton.

    When Wynton entered NOCCA at 15, his musical development
shifted into high gear. Tom Tewes, the school's founding
principal, recalls that he was a "brilliant student, always at
the top." Says Arlene McCarthy, a New Orleans attorney and
former NOCCA student: "Everybody knew he was destined to do so
much in music." For all his current stress on roots, Wynton
showed little interest in the New Orleans jazz tradition while
growing up there. His main exposure to jazz came from listening
to his father's modern quintet play at Lu and Charlie's, a
restaurant on the edge of the French Quarter. He never heard
any of the older musicians playing at Preservation Hall --
neither, in fact, did his father have any real contact with that
world. The closest Wynton came to performing jazz in those
years was working with Branford in a funk band called the
Creators. Wynton used most of his pay -- $75 a gig -- to buy
the small piccolo trumpets he needed to play baroque music.

    It was on the classical stage that Wynton first made his
mark. In addition to playing at NOCCA-sponsored concerts and
recitals, he became a regular performer with the New Orleans
Civic Symphony, the New Orleans Philharmonic and the
Philharmonic's touring brass quintet. Composer and conductor
Gunther Schuller vividly remembers the time Wynton showed up
at New York City's Wellington Hotel in the summer of 1978 to
audition for the Tanglewood Music Center, of which Schuller was
artistic director. After impressing the judges with his
virtuosity on the Haydn trumpet concerto, Wynton offered to
play Bach's extremely difficult Second Brandenburg Concerto.
"While he was warming up," says Schuller, "he concealed himself
behind a pillar, so I leaned over to see what he was doing. He
was pumping the valves and talking to his trumpet, saying, `Now
don't let me down.' He knocked off the first three phrases
flawlessly. We were overwhelmed by his talent."

    He entered New York City's elite Juilliard School the
following year and immediately began sitting in with bands at
local jazz clubs. Pianist James Williams, 38, recalls the time
that Marsalis, sporting an Afro and long sideburns, showed up
at McHale's and sat in with drummer Art Blakey's Jazz
Messengers. "Really, we were very excited," says Williams. "We
all knew he was going to be great." Marsalis knew it too. "He
wasn't arrogant; he was just so self-assured," says McCarthy,
who was by then studying at Barnard College. "He knew that by
meeting the right people he would make it." Sure enough, Blakey
asked Marsalis a few months later to join his band.

    But the young man still had a lot to learn. Stanley Crouch,
a New York City-based writer and jazz critic, befriended
Marsalis shortly after he joined Blakey's group, and was
astounded at how little he knew about jazz history. "He didn't
know anything about Ornette Coleman, Duke Ellington or
Thelonious Monk," says Crouch, 44. "His dad had tried to make
him listen to Louis Armstrong, but he had this naive idea that
Louis was an Uncle Tom."

    Crouch set to work on Marsalis' jazz education, lending him
records, taking him to clubs and engaging him in all-night gab
sessions. He also introduced the young trumpeter to writer
Albert Murray, whose 1976 book, Stomping the Blues, was a
seminal work on African-American music. Murray, now 74, took
Marsalis to museums and bookstores and got him reading
"everything from Malraux and Thomas Mann to the Odyssey and the
Iliad." In particular, he filled him in on the life and works
of Duke Ellington, whom Murray considers the "quintessential
American composer."

    Columbia's George Butler first heard Marsalis with the
Blakey band while scouting New York City jazz clubs for young
talent. "Here was an 18-year-old playing with the maturity and
facility of men twice his age," he says. "He was the ideal
person to appeal to a young marketplace and revive the larger
audiences that had been into acoustic jazz in the '50s." Butler
promptly signed the new artist and devised an unheard-of
marketing strategy: simultaneous record releases in both the
jazz and classical idioms. Marsalis' first Columbia jazz album
won a 1983 Grammy nomination. The following year he hit pay
dirt: double Grammys, one each in the jazz and classical genres.

blossomed."

    Butler also claims some credit for the clean-cut image that
set the trumpeter apart from scruffy rockers and fusionists.
Back in his Jazz Messengers days, Marsalis would go onstage in
tennis shoes and overalls. "But once we started to talk about
appearance," says Butler, "Wynton began to epitomize what jazz
musicians ought to look like." Indeed, sartorial elegance has
become de rigueur among the new generation of jazzmen.

    Columbia made sure that its star stayed visible. The company
assigned him to high-powered publicist Marilyn Laverty, who
represented rock star Bruce Springsteen, and she soon generated
reams of press clips. Wynton is the first to admit that
Columbia's salesmanship had a lot to do with his popular
success, but claims not to take it seriously. "It has nothing
to do with artistic merit or substance," he says. Adds brother
Delfeayo, who has produced more than a dozen albums for
Columbia and other labels: "Sure, Wynton has the hype. He
created the hype: he was cute and articulate, and he could play
his ass off. But people shouldn't confuse the hype with the
music."

    Precisely. Wynton's musicianship, already on a world-class
technical level when he first hit New York, has continued to
develop and mature. Though his early influences -- Clifford
Brown, Freddie Hubbard and pre-fusion Miles Davis -- are still
discernible in his playing, he is increasingly forging his own
sound. Since leaving Blakey to form his own band in 1981, he
has released a total of 12 jazz albums, and he has enough
material in the can to fill eight or 10 more. On the classical
side, he has done five recordings, and is now working on a
baroque album with soprano Kathleen Battle.

    Marsalis' prolific jazz output runs the gamut from
soothingly sensual (Hot House Flowers, 1984, with a string
ensemble) to cerebral (Black Codes from the Underground, 1985)
to fiery and aggressive (Live at Blues Alley, 1988). His latest
effort, The Resolution of Romance, a set of standard songs
featuring his father on piano, is a return to the very essence
of jazz -- a melody with a beat. The forthcoming sound-track
album for Tune in Tomorrow, set in the Crescent City, features
sonorous Ellingtonian orchestrations with a spicy New Orleans
accent. In addition to recording, Wynton plays some 120 live
performances a year at venues ranging from cramped basement
clubs like New York City's venerable Village Vanguard to the
cavernous Hollywood Bowl to Lincoln Center, where since 1987
he has served as artistic director for the annual Classical
Jazz festival.

    The fullest measure of Marsalis' musicianship comes from
other musicians -- particularly the veteran jazzmen he so
admires. Trumpeter Doc Cheatham, 85, calls Marsalis "one of the
greatest young trumpet players around. He's at the top level
on his horn and improving every day." Bass player Milt Hinton,
80, says Marsalis "stacks up miles ahead of" such past greats
as Armstrong and Henry ("Red") Allen in mastery of the
instrument. "But he doesn't yet have as much creativity
blues-wise and dirt- and funk-wise as they had because he
hasn't had to live it." Marsalis' main limitation -- one he
shares with the entire youth brigade -- is the lack so far of
a truly original creative voice. Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, 73,
puts it succinctly: "You don't see no Charlie Parkers coming
along."

    Saxophonist-composer-bandleader Gerry Mulligan, 63, is
particularly impressed by Wynton's developing skills as a
composer and his "sensibilities as a bandleader." Those
sensibilities were sorely tested in 1985, when Branford jumped
ship to join Sting's rock group. That not only destroyed a band
style based on the tight interplay between the two brothers,
but also sparked press articles that turned the breakup into
a bitter public row. The dust has settled, but relations remain
cool between them. "He didn't kill nobody, you know," shrugs
Wynton.

    In the aftermath of that derailment, which launched Branford
on a highly successful career of his own, Wynton has assembled
a group of young players (pianist Eric Reid, 20; drummer Herlin
Riley, 33; trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, 23; saxophonists Todd
Williams, 23, and Wes Anderson, 25) remarkable not only for
their musicianship but also for their loyalty to his
leadership. Says Anderson: "Wynton is someone who can guide us.
He's one of the shepherds of this music."

    Meanwhile, Wynton found a shepherd to help guide him back
to the source: New Orleans clarinetist Michael White, 35.
Unlike Marsalis -- unlike most blacks of his generation --
White took an interest in the city's old-time musicians,
learned to play their style and eventually became a regular
with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The two men started
bumping into each other at airports and music festivals a few
years ago and developed a close friendship.

    When Marsalis decided to include a New Orleans-flavored
suite on his 1989 Majesty of the Blues album, he asked White
to come up and record with him, along with other members of
White's Original Liberty Jazz Band: trombonist Freddie Lonzo,
40, trumpeter Teddy Riley, 66, and banjoist Danny Barker, 81,
a veteran of the famous Cab Calloway orchestra. (Marsalis as
a little boy had actually known Barker and played very briefly
in a children's marching band organized by the banjoist.)

    Marsalis has since performed with these "homeboys," notably
at a Hollywood Bowl tribute to Armstrong and at Lincoln
Center's Classical Jazz festival, where they played such
1920s-vintage New Orleans numbers as Armstrong's Cornet Chop
Suey and Jelly Roll Morton's Jungle Blues. For Marsalis, who
had brashly declared in one of his early interviews that "there
is no jazz in New Orleans," that was quite a turnaround. He now
regrets what he calls his youthful "ignorance" and is delving
into that city's musical legacy -- particularly the blues --
with a vengeance.

    He is learning his lessons well, applying them not only to
his playing and composing but also to a whole music-centered
philosophy about American life and culture. Sitting in the
sparsely furnished living room of his Manhattan brownstone,
with three Louis Armstrong statuettes peering down from the
mantelpiece, he confidently mingles allusions to Picasso and
the Iliad with appreciations of Duke Ellington and childhood
anecdotes. The hardwood floor is littered with the toys of his
two sons, Wynton Jr., 2, and Simeon, six months; their mother
Candace Stanley, 28, is doing postgraduate work at New York
University. (Marsalis has put the four-story house on the
market for $950,000 and is planning to move his family to New
Orleans.)

    His glasses give him a scholarly look, partially offset by
the sweat pants, T-shirt and basketball shoes he favors when
not onstage. He speaks softly, occasionally offering an impish
smile or raising his eyebrows to make a point. He sips hot tea
as he talks. Like most of today's young players, he stays away
from alcohol, cigarettes and drugs.

    Marsalis sees jazz as a metaphor for democracy. "In terms
of illuminating the meaning of America," he says, "jazz is the
primary art form, especially New Orleans jazz. Because when
it's played properly, it shows you how the individual can
negotiate the greatest amount of personal freedom and put it
humbly at the service of a group conception." He points to
Ellington as the jazzman who best embodied the "mythology of
this country" in his music.

    Over and over, Marsalis' conversation returns to a key
concern: education. His antidote for what he considers the
cultural mediocrity that reigns in America today is to promote
jazz-education programs throughout the U.S. "I know this music
can work," he says. "To play it, you have to have the belief
in quality. And the belief in practice, the belief in study,
belief in your history, belief in the people that you came out
of. It is a statement of heroism against denigration."

    Marsalis does more than talk about education. When he is
touring, he always makes time to visit local schools and preach
the jazz gospel. He stays in touch with many of the students
he meets, offering them pointers over the phone, inviting them
to sit in on his gigs and sometimes even giving them
instruments. "Lord knows how much effect he's had on kids
around the country. He's to be praised for that alone," says
Steve Backer, executive producer of RCA's Novus jazz label and
an active recruiter of young talent.

    "Whenever he came to New Orleans, he'd pick me up from
school, we'd play basketball, then have a trumpet lesson,"
recalls Marlon Jordan, whose recording debut, For You Only, was
released last year. "He had a definite effect on me, and it
will be there until I die." Trumpeter Roy Hargrove points to
a Marsalis master class at his Dallas high school as a major
turning point for him. "He's incredible. He really knows how
to communicate with people and make them understand the
tradition," says Hargrove, whose Diamond in the Rough album has
won high praise from jazz critics. Marsalis considers such
proselytizing part of his legacy: "I'm just passing on the
stuff that people like [Harry] `Sweets' Edison, Art Blakey, Max
Roach and Elvin Jones told me. I mean, I'm acting on a mandate
from them."

    The availability of a talented pool of young musicians
results in large part from the jazz-education programs that
have proliferated around the country during the past two
decades. The International Association of Jazz Educators,
founded in 1968, has helped start jazz-studies programs at more
than 100 U.S. colleges, and many high schools are including
jazz in their music curriculum. New York City's Jazzmobile,
founded 25 years ago by Billy Taylor, runs weekly workshops
attended by as many as 400 kids.

    The generally younger audiences attracted by Marsalis and
his colleagues are of course nowhere near the size of the
enormous market that routinely sends pop records over the
million mark -- and probably never will be. Nonetheless,
acoustic jazz has become a steady, moneymaking enterprise for
many record companies. For one thing, jazz is a low-overhead
business: production budgets range from $25,000 to $85,000 an
album, in contrast to $150,000 for rock records. That means the
companies can start to make profits on as few as 30,000 sales.
(Marsalis' sales  range from 52,000 for Live at Blues Alley to
more than 400,000 for Hot House Flowers.)

    The movement is also a lifesaver for club owners and
festival producers, promising them new audiences and exciting
artists at a time when older, long-established stars are
disappearing from the scene. George Wein, who produces the
Newport, JVC, Boston Globe and New Orleans festivals, calls the
advent of charismatic young players like Marsalis "not only
good for jazz but absolutely necessary."

    As for the artists, none are earning in the pop-star
category, but many are doing quite well. Marsalis, whose band
commands fees ranging from $2,000 to $40,000 a night, is
already worth several million dollars. "There is a general
misconception that you can't make money playing jazz," says his
manager, Ed Arrendell. "But Wynton and other top players can
do tremendously well. A popular jazz artist can expect to gross
well over a million a year." Of course, they must also pay
substantial band-related expenses; Marsalis claims such charges
drive his net income far under $500,000. The take of the
sidemen is much lower -- typically ranging from $40,000 to
$60,000 a year -- but  that still puts them in the top 20% of
U.S. income earners in a profession that traditionally reduced
its practitioners to a hardscrabble existence.

    Which is exactly what irks a number of older musicians, who
feel that the youngsters are getting it all on a silver platter
without the hard knocks and dues paying that their predecessors
went through. "They're getting a place in jazz history that
they have not deserved or earned," says bassist Ron Carter, 53.
"I mean, at 19, 20, how much can you really know?" Many
veterans complain that record companies are passing them over
in favor of the young guns.

    In fact, some observers predict hard times ahead for some
of today's highly touted youngsters. "A lot of them are going
to fall by the wayside," says Lorraine Gordon, owner of New
York's Village Vanguard. Arrendell agrees: "The record
companies are on board only as long as they're making money.
I think there always will be a demand for jazz. But the artists
they sign and keep are the ones who sell the most records. Some
guys are going to see their contracts not renewed."

    But then jazz has always been a high-risk profession: King
Oliver and Charlie Parker both died broke. What seems certain
now is that this great American cultural tradition is far
healthier than it has been in decades. In the hands of people
like Wynton Marsalis and hundreds of other talented musicians,
young and old alike, its future seems assured.

    Just what that future will sound like is hard to say. "Maybe
people will develop new voices again," muses guitarist Howard
Alden. "But with the knowledge of the traditional background,
it will have more depth." Saxophonist David Sanborn, 45, a
top-selling fusion artist, thinks that many of the current
acoustic players may start experimenting with more high-tech
sounds. RCA's Backer foresees an eclectic middle ground. Says
he: "The significant artists of Wynton's tradition will
continue to be important in the '90s, but they will coexist
alongside more probing, experimental artists."

    Whatever the dominant trends turn out to be, Wynton will not
be following them; he will be pursuing his own ambitious
agenda. "I have every intention of coming up with something
that's going to be significant," he says. "As my understanding
of form becomes more sophisticated, I'll be able to illuminate
more clearly how our country should be represented in music."
His ultimate aim? "To find a place in my heart for a real, true
expression. Something that is obvious to anybody who listens
to it; you know, something moving -- and touching." It is a
goal that his musical forebears -- from Bach to Bird -- would
surely understand.


____________________________________________________________
HORNS OF PLENTY


    BRANFORD MARSALIS

    Since leaving Wynton's band, sax man Branford, 30, has
caught fire, delivering seven albums (latest: Crazy People
Music) at the head of a superb quartet. Many people consider
him the most naturally talented Marsalis. His main purpose in
life: "To do a solo. Get busy. Burn out."

    MARCUS ROBERTS

    Blinded by cataracts at the age of four, Florida-born
Roberts, 26, devoted himself to the piano, absorbing the styles
of such past greats as Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and
Jelly Roll Morton. Invited in 1985 to join Marsalis, whom he
calls "the reason all these musicians are out here," the
soulful, bluesy pianist left last year to form his own group.
His latest album, Deep in the Shed, hit the top of Billboard's
jazz charts.

    HARPER BROTHERS

    Trumpeter Phil, 24, and drummer Winard, 28, spearhead a
driving quintet that bears their name. They grew up in Atlanta,
gigged around D.C. and in 1984 headed for the Big Apple. Their
debut album won plaudits, and the follow-up, Remembrance,
stayed on the charts for two months. Says Winard: "We love what
we're doing!"

    CHRIS HOLLYDAY

    At 20, alto-saxophonist Hollyday is already a veteran,
having played his first gig at 13 and recorded a year later.
Encouraged by his father and trumpet-playing older brother
Richard, Chris haunted the Boston club scene as a kid and had
memorized most of Charlie Parker's recorded solos by age 14.
But as he demonstrates on his latest album, On Course, he is
rapidly developing an exuberant, headlong style of his own. "My
ultimate goal," he says, "is to get my music so it's really
singing."

    MARK WHITFIELD

    Whitfield, 24, studied guitar at Berklee School of Music,
where he soaked up the licks of greats like Charlie Christian,
Wes Montgomery and George Benson. Benson was knocked out by
Whitfield's playing and helped him get a record contract. His
debut album, The Marksman, impressively showcases his talents
as a composer and soloist.