Jazz at Lincoln Center is a not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to jazz. With the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (formerly known as the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra), the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra with Arturo O’Farrill and a comprehensive array of guest artists, Jazz at Lincoln Center advances a unique vision for the continued development of the art of jazz by producing a year-round schedule of performance, education, and broadcast events for audiences of all ages. These productions include concerts, national and international tours, residencies, weekly national radio and television programs, recordings, publications, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival, a band director academy, a jazz appreciation curriculum for children, advanced training through the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies, music publishing, children’s concerts, lectures, adult education courses and student and educator workshops. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis, Chairman of the Board Lisa Schiff, Executive Director Katherine E. Brown and Jazz at Lincoln Center board and staff, Jazz at Lincoln Center will produce hundreds of events during its 2007-08 season. In October 2004, Jazz at Lincoln Center opened Frederick P. Rose Hall—the first-ever performance, education, and broadcast facility devoted to jazz.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, composed of 15 of today’s finest jazz soloists and ensemble players, has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center resident orchestra for over 13 years. Featured in all aspects of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s programming, the remarkably versatile Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performs and leads educational events in New York, across the U.S. and around the world; in concert halls, dance venues, jazz clubs, public parks, river boats, and churches; and with symphony orchestras, ballet troupes, local students and an ever-expanding roster of guest artists.

Education is a major part of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission and its educational activities are coordinated with concert and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tour programming. These programs, many of which feature Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members, include the celebrated Jazz for Young PeopleSM family concert series, the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival, the Jazz for Young PeopleTM Curriculum, educational residencies, workshops, and concerts for students and adults worldwide. Jazz at Lincoln Center educational programs reaches over 110,000 students, teachers and general audience members.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center weekly radio series, Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio with Ed Bradley, is distributed by the WFMT Radio Networks. Winner of a 1997 Peabody Award, Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio with Ed Bradley is produced in conjunction with Murray Street Enterprise, New York.

Under Music Director Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra spends over half of the year on tour. The big band performs a vast repertoire, from rare historic compositions to Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works, including compositions and arrangements by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Billy Strayhorn, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, Sy Oliver, Oliver Nelson and many others. Guest conductors have included Benny Carter, John Lewis, Jimmy Heath, Chico O'Farrill, Ray Santos, Paquito D’Rivera, Jon Faddis, Robert Sadin, David Berger, Gerald Wilson and Loren Schoenberg.

Jazz at Lincoln Center also regularly premieres works commissioned from a variety of composers, including Benny Carter, Joe Henderson, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Wayne Shorter, Sam Rivers, Joe Lovano, Chico O'Farrill, Freddie Hubbard, Charles McPherson, Marcus Roberts, Geri Allen, Eric Reed, Wallace Roney, and Christian McBride, as well as from current and former Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members Wynton Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, Ted Nash and Ron Westray.

Over the last few years, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has performed collaborations with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Russian National Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston, Chicago, and London Symphony Orchestras, the Orchestra Esperimentale in São Paolo, Brazil and others. In 2006, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra collaborated with Ghanaian drum collective Odadaa!, led by Yacub Addy, to perform “Congo Square,” a composition Mr. Marsalis and Mr. Addy co-wrote and dedicated to Mr. Marsalis’ native New Orleans. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has also been featured in several education and performance residencies in the last few years, including those in Vienna, France; Perugia, Italy; Prague, Czech Republic; London, England; Lucerne, Switzerland; Berlin, Germany; SÇœo Paulo, Brazil; Yokohama, Japan and others.

Television broadcasts of Jazz at Lincoln Center programs have helped broaden the awareness of its unique efforts in the music. Concerts by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra have aired in the U.S., England, France, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Norway, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. Jazz at Lincoln Center has appeared on several XM Satellite Radio live broadcasts and seven Live From Lincoln Center broadcasts, carried by PBS stations nationwide; most recently on October 18, 2004 during the grand opening of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new home, Frederick P. Rose Hall and on September 17, 2005 during Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Higher Ground Benefit Concert, which raised funds for the Higher Ground Relief Fund that was established by Jazz at Lincoln Center and administered through the Baton Rouge Area Foundation to benefit the musicians, music industry related enterprises and other individuals and entities from the areas in Greater New Orleans who were impacted by Hurricane Katrina and to provide other general hurricane relief. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was also featured in a Thirteen/WNET production of Great Performances entitled “Swingin’ with Duke: Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis,” which aired on PBS. In September 2002, BET Jazz premiered a weekly series called Journey with Jazz at Lincoln Center, featuring performances by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra around the world.

To date, 11 recordings featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis have been released and internationally distributed: Don’t Be Afraid . . . The Music of Charles Mingus (2005), A Love Supreme (2005), All Rise (2002), Big Train (1999), Sweet Release & Ghost Story (1999), Live in Swing City (1999), Jump Start and Jazz (1997), Blood on the Fields (1997), They Came to Swing (1994), The Fire of the Fundamentals (1993), and Portraits by Ellington (1992).